Albus Potter and the Room of Requirement
by paigeisgr8
Summary: It's Albus Potter's first year at Hogwarts, and things don't seem to be going well for him. Everybody hates him, even the people in his own house. There's a mysterious person lurking in the Hogwarts dungeons who should be in Azkaban. An ancient wizarding force is returning after centuries dormant. Everybody at Hogwarts is in mortal danger, but no one will believe Albus.
1. Prologue

**A/N: This is my first story on , and since this is fanfiction, I do not own Harry Potter. Unless I'm J. K. Rowling. I'll have to check that. Wait a second... nope.**

 **Anyway, this is the prologue for a story I'm partway through writing. It's the first in a planned series of seven, about Albus's time at Hogwarts. I won't put another chapter up for weeks, possibly months, because I want to have the whole story finished before I do. If you like it, plz let me know why. If you don't like it, also plz let me know why so I can make it better. The rest of the story is nothing like the prologue, but the prologue will make sense by the end, I promise. So plz read and plz review with constructive criticism so I can make the rest betterer. :)**

Victor Anderson was on holiday. After yet another year of teaching at Hogwarts, he was relaxing from the stress of marking exams in the south of France. He rarely dared to venture beyond the walls of Hogwarts with the history he had and the number of Death Eaters still at large nineteen years after the war. However, Harry Potter himself had assured him safety, sending two highly trusted wizards to look after him. He'd met them, and they seemed quite nice. They weren't Aurors, but Harry had assured him that they would be up to the job of protecting him.

While walking back to his holiday home for the last time, Victor considered the irony of his situation: a teacher of Defense Against the Dark Arts needing support from others to defend himself from dark wizards. He briefly thought back to his prime, when he had been able to fight against ten Death Eaters at once, yet his time as an Auror ended early when he became a victim of a powerful curse from a Death Eater. After the Battle of Hogwarts, he had been asked to work as a teacher, and he gladly accepted the offer.

He approached the door of his house, looking around. Surely Goldstein should be walking with him. How could he have forgotten? Goldstein had been following his every move every time he left the house, yet he was nowhere to be seen.

"Perhaps I've lost him," he muttered to himself. "I have been walking very quickly. He'll catch up to me later."

He looked to the upstairs window and saw a shadowy figure in the door. He knew it was Finch-Fletchley, who had been standing guard in the house, not leaving it for weeks.

"Well, at least one of them is vigilant," he joked to himself as he fumbled to get his key out of his pocket. Once he got it out, he dropped it. He moved to lean over and pick it up, but accidentally kicked it into a drain. "Dammit!"

Instead of going to the drain, he pulled out his wand and said " _Accio!_ " and immediately the key flung itself back out of the drain and into his hand. He unlocked the door, opened it, walked inside and then closed the door behind him, making sure it was locked again.

"Justin! I'm back!" he yelled out, though he knew that Justin had watched him come in. He walked down the main hall into the kitchen so that he could cook dinner, but he heard no reply.

"Justin! I'm about to cook dinner! If you want some, you'd better come now! And do you know where Anthony is? He didn't follow me home."

Still there was no reply, and he entered the kitchen, saying "Fine, more for me, then."

As he opened his pantry and looked inside, he heard a noise behind him. He turned around, but didn't see anything that could be considered the source of the noise.

"Justin? Was that you?"

Nothing.

"If you don't come in here right now, there'll be no dinner for you!"

Still nothing.

Victor gave up, and went back to the task at hand: his dinner. He looked until he saw a tin of spam. He did love eating muggle food every now and then. While spam may not taste good, he felt satisfied at having 'cooked' it without magic. He grabbed the tin, and closed the pantry. He turned around to go and get a bowl, but a shadowy figure in the doorway startled him. He squinted, his vision leaving him in his old age, and saw that it was the outline of a person in the corridor. The light was off, so he couldn't see who it was, but he knew that the only other person in the house was Finch-Fletchley.

"Oh, Justin! There you are! Why haven't you been replying to me?"

Justin didn't respond. He just lingered there, looking at Victor.

"I was thinking we'd have spam for dinner," Victor said, struggling to open the tin. "I know we've been having it a lot recently, but I just can't resist it. And it is our last night here, so just look forward to going home tomorrow and eat without complaining for once!"

Victor thought it odd that Justin hadn't laughed. He'd been a very light-hearted person, though strung up about security, and was always looking for a laugh.

"Are you alright Justin? You seem off."

Justin came into the kitchen. But as he came out of the dark corridor and into the light, Victor saw that it was not Justin. He vaguely recognized this man, as if he had seen him years ago, but could not put a name to the face.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Professor Anderson," the man replied in a deep voice, "Don't you remember your star student? You may have only taught me for a year, but surely I left an impression on you."

Suddenly, it hit Victor. "Lot! Is that you?"

Lot nodded at him.

"It's so good to see you after all these years!" Victor exclaimed. "What has it been since you graduated, eighteen years? Yes, it must be. You were in your seventh year when I started teaching at Hogwarts."

"Yes, that is correct. But I did not come here to merely catch up. I want something from you," Lot said slowly and carefully, as if to make sure he said the right words.

"Spam?" Victor asked, smiling as he finally got the tin open.

"Please, no." Lot said with a disgusted look on his face. "I was raised by muggles, and I am aware of its monstrosity."

"You're missing out," Victor said. "I'll get an extra bowl out in case you change your mind." Sure enough, Victor bent over and opened a cupboard. He pulled out four bowls.

"That won't be necessary," Lot said approaching him. "In fact, you needn't worry about you two friends, either. I've already taken care of them."

"Taken care of them how?" Victor asked. "I do hope you didn't feed them any spam. I was going to take some back to Hogwarts. It is very difficult to get the House-Elves at Hogwarts to cook muggle food, and I haven't had any in such a long time. Speaking of those two, did Justin let you in?"

"I let myself in. Justin was a bit" Lot paused for a moment, thinking about his next word, "reluctant to let me in."

"Yes, he has been a bit uptight about security on this trip," Victor nodded. "Did you tell him you were an old student of mine?"

"No, I did not. He didn't listen to me once I had come in. And I think you've done more than enough of that," Lot said as he raised his wand. "It's time for your life to come to an end."

"Oh, don't be like that, Lot. You always were melodramatic, but I think that this joke has gone far enough. Can you please tell me where Justin is?"

"He is upstairs in his bedroom. You can go and see him if you're fast enough."

Lot aimed his wand at Victor and yelled " _Stupefy!_ "

Victor ducked just as a flash of light went over his head. He ran, firing a spell at Lot. Lot was taken by surprise at the non-verbal spell and fell to the floor. This provided enough distraction for Victor to run out of the room and into the hallway. The sun had gone down during their conversation, and it was now hard for him to see anything at all. He located the stairs from memory, and ran up them. As he turned the corner on the stairway, a flash of light hit just below him, and he saw that Lot had recovered.

Because he couldn't see anything, he tripped at the top of the stairs. Lot slowly walked up to him on the stairs and stood above him victorious. "I'm sorry that you had to die for this, professor. _Ava-_ "

Lot was cut off when Victor suddenly pulled at his leg from below, causing him to trip and fall down the stairs.

Victor quickly got up and ran to Justin's room, yelling "Justin! Justin!" as he entered.

He saw that Justin was lying on his bed, but fully clothed and above the covers. He turned Justin's body over to see his face completely void of colour.

"No!" he screamed. "No!"

He heard footsteps enter the room behind him.

"Why are you doing this?" Victor screamed at Lot, still staring at Justin's lifeless eyes.

"Because one less wizard defending Hogwarts puts me one step closer to Harry Potter," Lot said.

A tear rolled down Victor's cheek.

"I'm dreadfully sorry it had to be like this professor, but you know how it is."

Victor clutched his wand with both hands, his body starting to shake uncontrollably.

"This is the end of the line for you," Lot said.

Victor quickly turned around, trying to catch Lot by surprise, but his age had made him slow.

" _Avada Kedavra!_ "


	2. Chapter 1: Hogwarts

**A/N: Alrighty, so this is Chapter 1. It's very different from the prologue, and most of the chapters are going to be more like this until the last few chapters. This picks up just after the end of the Epilogue of Deathly Hallows.**

After getting on the Hogwarts express with seconds to spare before the train left, Albus and Rose were ditched by James, who had been fetched by Fred. The two of them then started going from one compartment to the next, and each time they entered a compartment their entrance was almost immediately followed by people screaming and running out.

Albus and Rose were then left to their own devices, having to seek out their own compartment to sit in. Every compartment had something wrong with it. Many were full, but the others had problems of their own. One was full of smoke, another had a roof that was leaking milk, one didn't even seem to have seats, and yet another looked normal, but once you entered your head inexplicably jumped off of your head and ran around for a bit. Albus found it quite a struggle to get it back, only being able to do so when a Hufflepuff prefect took pity on him and helped him out.

"The name's Howard Seymour," the prefect said, introducing himself, before asking the obligatory "You're Harry Potter's kid? You look just like him."

Albus seemed to get this wherever he went. He looked quite similar to his father, the famous boy-who-lived, and it seemed that people would compulsively point it out to him. Albus responded with a meek "Yes."

"You want me to help you find somewhere that your brother and cousin haven't booby trapped?" Howard asked him, dragging the two away from the compartment without waiting for an answer. Clearly James and Fred's infamy spread far in Hogwarts.

"Thanks," muttered Rose, seemingly disappointed that Howard had straight away introduced himself to Albus without paying her a second thought.

"So what's it like, being the son of the Boy-Who-Lived? Does he tell you many stories about fighting You-Know-Who? Have you ever fought a dark wizard, yourself? You probably haven't, you're only eleven, and as if any wizard could get past your dad. Or witch, of course. Though my girlfriend Hepsie has quite a temper on her, I bet she could take on even the most experienced Auror after they've badgered her," and Howard seemed to be having his own conversation, Albus and Rose completely bewildered by his ability to keep it up so well. They quietly followed him until he opened the door to a compartment with two other first-years in it. There was a tall black-haired boy with his nose held high and a small blonde girl who did nothing but look out of the window. "Well, here ya go. Nice talking to you, but I've got to run now. I promised my friends I'd sit with them, and they'll probably be wondering where I am. Catch you later… Alfred isn't it?"

" _Albus_ ," Albus corrected. He suddenly realized that in all the time that Howard had been talking, he hadn't once asked his or Rose's names.

"Right, Albus. I remember now. Hopefully you get sorted into Hufflepuff! It'd be great to have someone so nice in our house. Anyway, I'd best be off now. Bye!"

And with that, the four first-years were left to awkward silence for about five minutes. It seemed to Albus that the two others didn't know each other either, so he decided to break the silence.

"Hi, I'm Alb…"

"I know who you are," interrupted one of the two others. "You're Harry Potter's son, Albus Potter. Hard not to know that. I'm Carrow. Cameron Carrow."

Rose broke her silence too, and introduced herself. "I'm Rose, I'm Albus's cousin."

"You're a Weasley?" Cameron asked, to which Rose nodded, slightly intimidated by his harsh tone. "I could've guessed from your hair alone."

The entire conversation seemed to be lost on the other student in the compartment, a very small blonde girl. Albus saw that Cameron didn't look too happy to be sitting with them, so he turned to introduce himself to the girl. "Hi, what's your name?"

"I'm Chanelle," she answered softly, turning to look at Albus. "I'm sorry, but I don't know who you are, my family aren't wizards or witches. I think I'm the first one."

At this statement, Cameron seemed to gag in disgust, for which he earned a very sharp glare from Rose. Rose shot angrily "Well it seems that _some_ people still have a problem with muggle-borns attending Hogwarts. I for one am happy to meet someone of such _interesting_ heritage. My grandparents are muggles, on my mother's side, and they are lovely people. I'm sure your family is just as nice."

Cameron groaned, "That's what I get? Harry Potter's son, a mudblood and a mudblood sympathizer? I'd honestly prefer Malfoy over this sludge."

Chanelle's face went bright red, and she returned to looking out the window. Rose was about to start lecturing Cameron about all of the reasons why muggle-borns are no more disadvantaged at magic than anybody else when Albus interrupted her, saying "Don't bother. It's wasted on him. It's like trying to convince a Chudley Cannons fan that scoring is important to Quidditch."

Cameron burst out laughing at this remark, and said "Well I think I know a thing or two about Quidditch. I support the Wimbourne Wasps…"

And from that point there was no turning back. Albus and Rose were both diehard fans of the Pride of Portree, and suddenly the three of them were arguing like crazy over who was going to do better in the upcoming Quidditch season. This conversation carried them most of the way to Hogwarts, until Chanelle turned back from the window and asked, "What's Quidditch?"

This stopped the conversation dead in its tracks. Cameron muttered something along the lines of "typical mudblood" and returned his nose to its position near the ceiling, but Rose then went into a detailed explanation of what Quidditch is. Chanelle was amazed by the sport, and also confused as to how everybody could pay attention to all four balls at once.

Eventually, the four students realized that they were probably close to Hogwarts, and had to get changed into their robes. Albus and Cameron left the room momentarily to let the girls change, and they then gave the boys the same courtesy once they were done. Their conversation suddenly turned into a discussion as to which houses they would all go into.

"You get sorted into a particular house based on what traits you have," explained Rose. "Gryffindors are brave, Hufflepuffs are loyal, Ravenclaws are smart and Slytherins are cunning." She then leaned in close to Chanelle, whispering "Cunning is code for evil."

Cameron confidently announced "I just know I'll be in Slytherin."

Rose and Chanelle had a small chuckle about this, barely audible.

"My entire family's been in Slytherin for generations," Cameron continued. Rose snorted, but put it off as needing to blow her nose.

"We're very proud of it."

At this point Rose completely lost it and Chanelle started laughing, too. Albus and Cameron were very confused.

"What? What's so funny?" Cameron kept asking them, but it was to no avail as the two kept laughing for several more minutes. Cameron let it go and, once the two girls had calmed down, Cameron turned to Albus.

"What house do you think you'll be in?" he asked.

"I don't know. All of my family's in Gryffindor, obviously, but my brother is convinced I'll end up in Slytherin."

"Would that be such a bad thing? I can tell you're alright, even if you are Harry Potter's son, so surely you at least _might_ be in Slytherin."

"I don't know. I guess it depends what the Sorting Hat says."

The conversation continued along these lines for a bit longer. Rose was convinced she'd either be in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, but said that it didn't really matter to her either way. Chanelle had no idea which house she might go into, but hazarded a guess that she would be in Hufflepuff.

Eventually, the train arrived at Hogwarts, and the four students got off of the train and onto the platform. They were confused as to what to do at first, but eventually Albus heard a familiar voice cry out "Firs' years! Firs' years over 'ere!"

Albus ran up to the giant of a man through the crowded platform, with the other three following in his wake.

"Hagrid!" he yelled out.

Hagrid looked around for a bit trying to figure out where the voice had come from, and eventually he spotted Albus in the crowd. "Al!" he yelled out. "It's so good ter see ya!" he remarked as Albus approached him and hugged him. Hagrid had often been at the Potter's house on important occasions, and Albus got to know Hagrid very personally as the two had become quite good friends.

After a minute, Hagrid had to return to calling all of the first-year students over, and once he was satisfied that he had everybody, he lead them towards the lake. Once at the lake, the students were told do get into boats. Albus got into one with Rose, Cameron and Chanelle, though Cameron looked less than pleased when Chanelle got on with them, and his nose remained firmly attached to the outer atmosphere for most of the duration of the boat ride.

After a while, the four of them could hear gasps ahead of them, and they got a bit worried, but then they got their first ever view of the castle. Hogwarts.

It was just as amazing as Albus had heard it described to him so many times. The mere sight of it was breathtaking. Albus couldn't wait to get there and explore all of the halls, finding the hidden passages and spending hours seeing every nook and cranny of the awesome structure. As they got closer, and he could see the castle in more detail, he realized that the descriptions he'd heard could never do it justice. It was the most amazing thing he'd seen in his life. He didn't take his eyes off of it from the second he saw it to the time he was dragged out of the boat by Rose. Hagrid then lead the students up to the castle, leaving them in the hands of Neville Longbottom.

Albus had also met Neville a few times in the past, and Neville seemed to recognize him. Or perhaps he just looked for the first-year that most closely resembled Harry Potter.

Either way, Albus got distracted by the splendor of the halls around him as Neville lead them towards the Great Hall. He barely took notice of a word that the professor said, only understanding what was going on after he asked Rose, who scolded him for not paying attention, and then Cameron, who actually told him what was happening.

"He says we're about to go into the Great Hall to get sorted in front of everybody. Apparently it's a big deal, even though half of us know which house we'll be in already."

Albus then pondered the point of the whole ceremony for those people who were already so confident of their house. If your house didn't matter in the long run, then why was Neville making such a big deal about it now? And why did it have to be in front of the whole school? And if you already knew which house you were bound to be in, what was the point in putting the hat on at all?

Neville then opened the doors to the Great Hall, and the first years walked through the tables to the front. Some of the students were amazed by the Great Hall and the vast number of older students seated at the tables, but most of them were absolutely awestruck by the ceiling of the Great Hall. Rose leaned over to Albus and said "It's charmed to look like the night sky!" which dragged Albus out of his thoughts and into the world around him. He looked up in awe, but then a familiar voice dragged his gaze away from the roof and towards the Gryffindor table at the edge of the hall.

"Albus!" he heard James yell. When he looked over, James and Fred were both hissing at him and pointing to the Slytherin table on the other side of the hall. Albus walked much more quickly towards the front after that.

At the front of the Hall was a table with people who Albus assumed to be the teachers. On one end was a middle-aged woman with very long dark brown hair and one of the biggest pointed hats Albus had ever seen. Next to her was another witch, this one with a much smaller hat and much shorter auburn hair. The next one was a dark-skinned witch with very foreign-looking robes, and then there was Hagrid. Even at the teachers' table, he absolutely dwarfed everybody. Alongside Hagrid was a very old wizard whose hair was completely grey and confined only to the sides of his head. Then, in the middle of the table, was one of the shortest people Albus had ever seen. He recognized him as the Hogwarts Headmaster, Filius Flitwick. Next to the Headmaster was an empty spot, which Albus assumed was Neville's, and beyond that was a quite young witch with straight hair and a very stern look on her face. The next teacher along was also quite young, but his face seemed to radiate kindness. Finally, at the end of the table, there was a young witch with a quite mad look on her face and much frizzled black hair.

When the first-years arrive at the front, they all stood before a ragged old hat. It looked big enough to fit over the entire body of some of the smaller students, and also looked as though it was about to fall to pieces. Suddenly, a tear started to move and the hat started singing.

After the Sorting Hat's song was done, Neville started calling students up to be sorted.

"Abbott, Jonty!"

A blonde-haired boy made his way from the crowd and sat on the stool. Neville placed the hat on his head, and barely a moment later the hat cried to the whole school, "HUFFLEPUFF!"

One of the tables erupted in cheers, with some students giving the boy a standing ovation as he made his way to the table. Albus could see that some people were exchange small bronze coins among each other. Apparently people placed bets on which house the first student would get sorted into.

"Badcocke, Nelle!"

A quite tall brown-haired girl approached the front, and this time the Sorting Hat stopped for a few moments. And it kept thinking. And thinking. An older Gryffindor student yelled out "Hurry up already!" after a few minutes of waiting, but eventually the Sorting Hat yelled out "HUFFLEPUFF!"

It might have been getting both of the first two students, or it might have been the fact that they had to wait so long for the result, but the Hufflepuff table seemed to cheer even louder for Nelle than for Jonty. Albus wondered if people had had time to place bets while the Sorting Hat was thinking, and his thoughts were then confirmed by two Ravenclaws exchanging small change.

"Bell, Vincent!" was the next one called up, and he was the first to join Gryffindor. "Bishop, Kip!" joined Ravenclaw, and then "Bloodworth, Emily!" was sorted into Slytherin, meaning that all four houses now had a first-year student. "Brownlow, Lilian!" was also put into Gryffindor, then "Bulstrode, Cody!" went to Slytherin and "Bunker, Radcliff!" to Ravenclaw. After that, it was finally Cameron's turn.

"Carrow, Cameron!" yelled Neville, placing the hat on Cameron's head. However, no sooner had the hat touched his head as it yelled out "SLYTHERIN!"

Cameron punched the air as he made his way to the Slytherin table, sitting amongst a group of fourth-years he seemed to already be acquainted with.

"Curtis, Yvonne!" was the next to be sorted, joining Gryffindor, but Albus then tuned out for a while. He knew that his name was a fair way down the alphabet from here, so he just stood there waiting, his feet getting tired. He suddenly felt sorry for Rose, knowing that her name was right at the end of the alphabet, starting with a 'W'.

Albus came back to attention when a string of boys all went to Gryffindor, "Longbottom, Matt!", "Low, Howard!" and "Macmillan, Kieran!" were all put in the lion house, and next up was "Malfoy, Scorpius!"

Rose turned to Albus, reminding him that this was the boy that her father had pointed out at King's Cross. Albus recognized the name Malfoy, and tried to place it, but he couldn't, and any hope of recognizing the boy was gone when he was briskly sorted into "SLYTHERIN!"

"Nott, Roxana!" followed Malfoy to Slytherin, and then "Ollivander, Denise!" went into Ravenclaw. Albus braced for his own sorting, suddenly getting very nervous as Neville made his way into the 'P's.

"Parker, Elise!" went to Gryffindor. "Parkinson, Victoria!" went to Slytherin. "Pierson, Norman!" also went to Slytherin. Then, the wait finally over, Neville called "Potter, Albus!" to the whole hall.

This was it. Albus slowly approached the stool at the front of the hall. Everybody went quiet, and then a quiet muttering started to spread. Most people knew who he was, the others were quickly told by their classmates. Everybody was on the edge of their seats, expecting greatness from the second son of Harry Potter.

He sat on the stool, and Neville then placed the Sorting Hat on his head, winking at Albus as he did so. The hat starting talking to Albus.

"Hmm, yes, I see. A very cunning young boy, much like your father in that respect. Hmm. But a thirst! A thirst to prove yourself! Yes, that is very strong. Yes. Perhaps Slytherin might be a good idea, they could help you so much. Hmm."

"Please not Slytherin, please not Slytherin," Albus whispered to the hat as quietly as he could.

"Oh, you are very much like your father. He also asked to be sorted elsewhere. Well, if not Slytherin, then we'd better follow tradition, hadn't we? GRYFFINDOR!"

The Gryffindor table erupted in cheers and celebration. Everybody got off of their seats and clapped him. Albus breathed a great sigh of relief, happy that he'd been sorted into the same house as his father. And his mother. And his brother. And his grandparents. On both sides. And all of his cousins. And his aunt and uncle. And basically everybody he was related to since the founding of Hogwarts. He hadn't let down the Potter legacy. As he approached the Gryffindor table he could see so many of his relatives joining in the applause. There were his cousins Victoire, Dominique, Louis, Molly and Fred, and of course his brother James. But they were scattered across the table with their own friends, so he just sat with the other first-years.

He sat down at the Gryffindor table next to a boy he remembered to be Kieran Macmillan, and hoped that Rose would also be sorted into Gryffindor. As the cheering began to settle down, Neville called out "Prewett, Gabrielle!" and people mostly returned their attention to the Sorting Hat. It was a very long wait for some of the students down the end of the alphabet, and some of them were clearly started to get restless. Things got very confusing when "Tate, Lily!" and "Thorburn, Lilly!" were both sorted into Ravenclaw, and both of them looked really similar, too. After them, "Thorne, Samuel!" went into Hufflepuff and it was Rose's turn.

"Weasley, Rose!"

Rose approached the stool and Neville put the Sorting Hat on her head. It didn't take long for the Sorting Hat to call out "GRYFFINDOR!" and for the first time Albus got to join in with his new house in cheering someone joining their table. Rose came over and sat next to him, smiling.

Chanelle was the last student to be sorted. Albus didn't realize her last name was even further down the alphabet than Rose's, and once she was sorted into "HUFFLEPUFF!" Neville took the Sorting Hat away. The Headmaster, Filius Flitwick, then stood up. After standing up, in order to be seen by the whole school, he climbed onto the table and stood in clear view of everyone.

"Good evening everybody! For those first-years who do not know who I am, my name is Filius Flitwick, and I am the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I hope you all enjoy your education here this year. As a former teacher of forty years, I understand how important this stage of your life is. The things that you learn at this school will not only prepare you for your exams, but also for your life. Now, before we get to the feast, I'd like to mention a few things. First, allow me to introduce our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Fred Smith!"

The young wizard stood up, smiling from ear to ear, and everybody in the great hall clapped politely for him. After a brief moment, he returned to his seat, still beaming.

"Professor Smith kindly agreed to take on this role after Professor Anderson's very sudden and very unfortunate death two weeks ago. I understand that he was much loved among the students at the school, who had him for their entire time here, and nobody will ever be able to truly replace him. It is a sad day whenever a member of staff dies, and we have been fortunate enough for that to not happen for quite some time. Professor Anderson will not be forgotten. Now, to housekeeping issues, the Forbidden Forest is forbidden, as you would imagine, and your consequences for entering will both be from the teachers along with from the many dangers of the forest itself. Do not enter it."

Albus started to hear people muttering around him. He caught people saying things like "What do you think's in there?", "How hard is it to get in?" and "I heard there's a giant living in there!"

Professor Flitwick cut off these mutterings, saying "Now, I believe you'll all be quite hungry after that long Sorting Ceremony, so I won't keep you waiting any longer. However, I will remind you that even though tomorrow is a Saturday, you are still expected to be at the Great Hall for breakfast at the normal time so that you can receive your class schedules for the term. Now, without any further ado, let the feast begin!"

Suddenly, plates full of food appeared on all of the tables, and everybody began stuffing their faces with food. Albus thought it was the best food he'd ever eaten. It was all delicious, and he had as much of everything as he could, until finally he couldn't eat anything else for fear of it all coming back up. He resigned himself to getting to know the other students, but Rose seemed to be able to eat a lot more than him. He started getting to know the other first-years. He was sitting next to Kieran Macmillan. Kieran was a pureblood boy, and a mad Quidditch fan, but he was a bit disappointed that he hadn't been sorted into Hufflepuff. Next to Kieran was Howard Low. Howard was a muggle-born, and was absolutely mesmerized by everything. He seemed ecstatic to be there, and was really looking forward to their classes. Next to Howard was Matt Longbottom. Matt was the third cousin twice removed of Neville Longbottom. Or was it second cousin three times removed? No, it can't be three times removed, it must be second cousin twice removed. Or was it? Albus couldn't remember at all. But the specifics didn't matter; they were related is all that mattered. Next to Matt was Vincent Bell, another muggle-born. However, in contrast to Howard, he seemed bored out of his mind. He didn't care about magic, and wished he was at a "normal" school with his other friends. Across from Vincent was Lilian Brownlow. Lilian spent basically the whole feast telling everybody and anybody that "My mum's a witch, but my dad's a muggle, so they didn't tell me I was a witch until I got my letter from Hogwarts!" She thought it was the most entertaining story in the world, and every time somebody introduced themselves to her, she would tell it again. Albus was certain he'd heard it no less than fourteen times by the end of the feast. Next to Lilian was Yvonne Curtis. Yvonne was a muggle-born, but also quite a talkative girl. She kept on asking Matt questions about everything to do with Hogwarts, assuming that he would know since he was related to Neville. Next to Lilian was Brianna Holt. Brianna had hardly eaten a thing, and looked like she was about to fall asleep. She kept yawning louder and louder, probably trying to get the attention of one of the older students so that they could take her to her bedroom. Next to Brianna was Elise Parker. Elise was engaged in a deep discussion with Rose, who had to speak between mouthfuls of food, about something to do with magic. They were both so smart that Albus could barely keep up with what they were saying.

Eventually, the feast was over. When the first-years were told to follow their fifth-year prefects, Brianna yelled out quite loudly "Finally!" gaining quite a bit of attention from the students around her, who looked more annoyed than anything else. One of the prefects was Evan Mathewson, a long-haired boy who appeared to be no taller than any of the first-years, yet his hair easily went down to his waist. The other prefect was a tall, blonde and very attractive girl, Dominique Weasley, Albus and Rose's cousin.

"Alright, first-years!" yelled out Evan, whose voice was more than deep enough to compensate for the lack of height he had. "Our common room is on the seventh floor. This means we will have to go up several flights of stairs to get there. Watch out, though, because the stairs like to move around a bit. Keep close to me and Dominique and make sure you keep watch of where you're walking. A step on the stairs might vanish, and then you'd trip, and you don't want that trip to be to the hospital wing on your first day here."

Evan led the first-years towards the Gryffindor Tower, and Dominique walked at the back with Albus and Rose in case the back few students got separated from the rest of them.

"So, what do you think of Hogwarts so far?" Dominique asked them, with a tone of excitement in her voice. "It's pretty cool, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it's great! I can't wait to look around. Do we have any free time? Do we get maps of the place?" asked Albus.

"Well, tomorrow is Saturday, so you'll have free time basically all day," Victoire answered. "But we don't get maps; you have to sort of figure it all out yourself. Don't worry about going to breakfast early, by the way. If you don't get there early enough to get your schedule you can just go to Neville's office and get it from him there. He's really laid back about that kind of stuff. Better than Professor Abel, anyway. God, I'm so happy I'm not in Hufflepuff."

"Who's Professor Abel?" asked Rose.

"She's the Transfiguration teacher, and the Head of Hufflepuff. She's got a stick up her arse, and nobody really likes her. She doesn't like us either. I don't get why she teaches if she hates students so much."

"Are there other teachers like her? Strict ones, I mean." asked Albus, momentarily terrified.

"Uh, not really. She's the worst by far. Maybe Professor Smith will be, and I hear that Professor Babbling's a bit harsh, but you only have her if you do Ancient Runes anyway, so she doesn't matter."

"Oh, that's a relief."

The three cousins chatted for most of the rest of the walk to the Gryffindor common room. Every time they walked passed a painting, Howard and Yvonne would get very excited about it. Even Vincent looked quite interested about the fact that they kept moving around and talking to each other. Eventually, they all arrived at a wall with a large painting of a quite fat lady. Evan stopped them all, and looked at the painting, saying, loudly enough for all of the first-years to hear, "Albus Dumbledore!" Albus looked up at Dominique, and she winked at him. Albus Dumbledore was the Headmaster of Hogwarts that Albus had been named after.

The painting swung backwards, and revealed a small tunnel. "That's the password to enter the common room, guys. Remember it: 'Albus Dumbledore'. If you forget it, you're trapped out and can't get back in." He stopped suddenly, and instructed to everyone, "Say it after me. Albus Dumbledore."

A few of the first-years muttered "Albus Dumbledore", but most of them just stayed there in awkward silence. Albus could hear the other Gryffindors chatting to each other on the other side of Evan.

Evan wasn't satisfied with this. "I'm not going to let any of you into the common room until you've all said it. So promptly, repeat after me. Albus Dumbledore"

This time most of them said it, "Albus Dumbledore."

"Nope. Not good enough. Say it again."

"Albus Dumbledore." they all chorused back at him, even Dominique said it so that he'd hear it louder and let them in.

"Louder!" Evan shouted, with flamboyant hand gestures.

"Albus Dumbledore!" they all shouted back at him.

"LOUDER!"

"ALBUS DUMBLEDORE!"

They could hear everybody in the common room suddenly get quiet.

"Good. Now you'll all remember that, so all of you will be able to get in the common room. Oh, and it changes every couple of weeks, if you don't know what it is you can just ask me or Dominique or one of the other prefects."

Evan led them into the common room, and then directed them all to their bedrooms. Albus said goodbye to Rose and Dominique, and then made his way into his room. He saw that all of his stuff was already in there, and his bed was already made. He put his pajamas on and then went to bed, but couldn't sleep all night. He was anticipating his classes, and was up well past midnight, too excited to sleep.


	3. Chapter 2: The Room of Requirement

**A/N: After this chapter, I'm going to update twice each week, and hopefully I can stick to that. :)**

 **Also, I should explain that in this story, the students have lessons with everyone in their year most of the time. This is because I wanted to make this as realistic as possible, and when I went through and made class schedules for every year, I figured out that it was impossible for them to have most lessons just in their own house because there aren't enough teachers in the school for it.**

Albus woke up very early the next morning when the sun started creeping onto his bed from the windows. Nobody else was awake, so he quietly got dressed and made his way down to the Great Hall. It took him a while to find it, especially with the stairways moving all over the place, but eventually he got there. By the time he'd arrived, Rose was already there, eating a massive pile of pancakes.

Albus joined her, and eventually they were joined by Matt Longbottom. The three of them were all enjoying their breakfast when Neville came up to them and gave them their schedules. As Neville was leaving, Albus yelled out "Wait! How are you two related again?"

Neville and Matt both answered simultaneously. Neville said "Third cousins, three times removed." but Matt said "Fourth cousins, twice removed." They then looked at each other.

"No, wait, we're definitely third cousins because my grandmother is your great-grandmother's sister." Neville said.

"But isn't that second cousins? Or fourth cousins? Or does it depend on which way you look at it?" Matt countered, sounding like he was honestly confused.

"I always forget how it works, to be honest. This is why our family gatherings shouldn't have so many people," said Neville, with a look of resignation on his face as he walked off.

"That was confusing. How many people go to your family gatherings?" asked Albus.

"Way too many." Matt replied simply.

After this discussion, the three Gryffindors turned their attention to their class schedules. Their lessons were with every house, except for Defense Against the Dark Arts and Potions. These two classes were only with the Slytherins, which they were quite upset about. The other big surprise was that they had to go to Astronomy at midnight on Wednesday nights. Surely that wasn't a good idea? To have the students all tired every week?

While the three of them were discussing their schedule with each other, Albus heard an all-too-familiar voice from behind him, "Al!"

"What, James?" Albus replied meekly.

"I just wanted to congratulate you on getting into Gryffindor! It must be hard considering…" James started

"You're a dead match for a Slytherin!" finished Fred, their cousin. "I mean, you look almost exactly like one Slytherin in our year, Jordan Wells. He's right up there for most 'cunning' Slytherin with Hunter Gardener. He's one of their prefects, a sixth year." Albus noticed that Fred had a heavy amount of sarcasm in his voice when he said the word 'cunning'.

As the day was a Saturday, there were no classes for any students, and Rose took the opportunity to explore the castle. After a bit of persuading, she convinced Albus and Matt to go with her.

They started on the seventh floor, the same floor as the Gryffindor common room, but they were unable to find anything interesting on it. They decided to go down a floor to the sixth floor, but the only interesting thing was a painting of a Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Slytherin, but it looked like it was from a few centuries ago. The painting showed the Gryffindor seeker catching the snitch, only to have it knocked out of his hand by a bludger. Every time the seeker recovered the snitch, the same bludger would knock it out of his hand. It seemed like a horrible fate for the painting to have, but it's not like they could do anything about it.

The fifth floor was also quite boring. All that they could see really was a small patch of swamp which they were curious about the origin of, but it's not like there was anybody around to ask, and even if there was, it's not like people would be likely to know.

Thoroughly bored of exploring, the three of them returned to the Gryffindor Tower, where Rose decided to get her wizard's chess set out. She started out by playing against Albus.

"Pawn to e4," she started the game. Matt was watching eagerly alongside, he'd arranged to play whoever won the game.

"Pawn to e5," Albus replied. He'd played Rose countless times before, and usually lost the games. He felt that this would be no different, but hopefully he could make it last a while so that he still held some self-esteem in the eyes of Matt.

"Knight to f3," Rose responded. While they were playing, another Weasley arrived to watch. This time, it was a tall redhead girl.

"What's up, guys?" she asked as she approached the three first-years.

"Playing wizard's chess," Albus answered. "Winner gets to play Matt. Knight to c6."

Matt took the opportunity to introduce himself, saying "Hi, I'm Matt Longbottom" as Rose moved her bishop to b5.

"Molly Weasley. Al, do the Berlin Defense. You remember what happened last time you did the Morphy Defense, right?"

"Yes, yes. Knight to f6."

"Pawn to d3," played Rose, which was a bit of a surprising move for Albus.

"How d'you like the castle so far?" Molly asked.

"It's alright. We tried exploring, but there wasn't much to see." Albus answered. "Bishop to c5."

"Yeah, the food is great, though. Who cooks all of it?" asked Rose, before castling.

"I think it's house-elves. The Hufflepuff common room is near the kitchens, you could ask one of them, but I'm pretty sure it's house-elves," Molly answered.

"Pawn to d6," Albus moved. "What do you guys usually do with your spare time here? The castle is so boring!"

While Rose moved her rook to e1, Molly began answering by saying "The castle is so interesting! It has so much history behind it you can read about and of course you're not going to stumble on all of its secrets on the first day! It takes a lot more patience than that. It's not as simple as just opening the door and looking into a room. You have to look around for trap doors and secret passages." She seemed to be in awe of the castle.

Albus castled and Matt complained, "But that would take so much effort! It's not worth it if we have to work so hard."

"You're looking at it all wrong. What did you do, walk around a bit and then move on to the next floor?" Molly questioned.

Albus felt disappointed with himself, because that's exactly what they'd been doing. Rose took his knight with her bishop, and then he took it back with his pawn. Molly noticed their silence and changed her expression from one of curiosity to one of consolation.

"Tell you what, it's loud in here, let me take you to somewhere quiet," Molly said.

"But what about our chess game?" Rose asked as she pushed her king's rook's pawn.

"Don't worry about it. You know what the position is?" Molly asked.

"Yeah," Albus replied. "But we kind of want to finish it off before we do anything else. Rook to e8."

"But don't you want to go somewhere quiet to play?" Molly continued, with a hint of excitement in her voice.

"Sure, I guess." Rose answered. "Knight to d2."

"Then leave it and come with me. I want to show you something."

Albus didn't know why, but he decided to go with her. He got up from his seat and said "Come on, guys."

"But what about the game?" asked Rose. Matt looked a bit annoyed too, since he would have to wait longer before it was his turn.

"We'll finish it off later, I guess." Albus replied, shrugging his shoulders. "We might as well follow Molly if she knows about something interesting." His voice sounded more bored than anything else, and his body language was similar. He hung his head quite low and barely mustered the strength to smile for them. Eventually, Matt folded.

"Fine, let's go then."

"Great! I promise you won't be disappointed," Molly said, her voice getting louder.

"But guys! We have to finish the game!" Rose objected.

"Don't you want to see something interesting?" Molly asked.

"Yeah, you were the one that wanted to explore in the first place!" Albus argued.

"That was before the chess game!"

"I told you, we can finish it later. It's too loud in here to concentrate properly anyway."

"But-"

"We're going with or without you, Rose." Albus concluded.

"Let's just go without her, Albus, she'll probably ruin it anyway," Molly said.

Molly walked off, and Matt followed. Albus lingered for a moment, looking at Rose, but Rose just stared at the chess board for a while. Eventually, Albus walked off.

As the three of them were about to leave the common room, they heard Rose behind them say "Fine, but we come back here straight away."

Rose clearly didn't want to, though. Her eyes were lit up like stars with excitement, and she more skipped than ran to catch up with the other three.

Molly lead them out of the common room, leaving the Fat Lady behind them and taking them through various corridors. Eventually, they got to a place where hung a tapestry of some wizard trying to teach trolls to dance the ballet.

"See that?" Molly asked. "That's Barnabas the Barmy."

"Oh, that makes sense." Rose replied. "I was wondering why someone would be trying to teach trolls to do ballet."

"Yeah, he was a very barmy wizard. Anyway, the other side of the corridor is important. See this empty stretch of wall? It's not as empty as it looks."

Molly walked along the corridor a few feet, and the three first-years followed her. However, she then turned around and walked back. Albus and Rose gave each other funny looks, before turning around and following her. Just as they caught up to her, she turned around again and walked back.

"What the heck are you doing?" Matt asked her, but as soon as the words had left his mouth, a door appeared on the wall opposite the tapestry. "But how-"

"Magic," Molly interrupted, before opening the door and beckoning them in. "Behold! The room of requirement!"

Albus, Matt and Rose all entered, and their jaws dropped. What they saw was a room the size of a cathedral, and the room had a maze of shelves, full of random objects. They weren't small shelves, either. Albus wondered how people could even reach to the top of them to put things on them, they seemed to be so tall that even Hagrid would struggle to reach the objects on top. And there were so many different things on the shelves, too. There was furniture, clothes, bottles of unknown liquids, thousands upon thousands of books and eggshells that Albus could've sworn looked like they came from dragon eggs. He saw stuffed trolls, glass trolls, marble trolls and even the severed head of a troll. There were wine bottles and beer bottles and vodka bottles. There were swords, axes and quills full of arrows. It seemed like there was nothing that this room didn't have in it.

"The room of requirement is a very special room, you see," Molly explained. "All you have to do is walk passed the wall three times, think really hard about what you want, and the door will appear with whatever you want in it. It can be a storage cupboard, an empty room, a bathroom, or even this. I found this room when I wanted to hide something. I think that people, students and teachers alike, have been using this place to hide things for centuries, maybe even since Hogwarts first became a school. Some of the stuff in here looks that old, anyway."

Albus became mesmerized with the objects on the shelves. He made to pick up a deck of cards, but Molly dragged his hand away, saying "You can't be too careful in here, that's for sure. One time I picked up a vial of something, and it started to burn my hand. It burnt it pretty good, too. I was in the hospital wing for a week recovering."

"Does anybody else know about this place?" Albus asked.

"Yeah, a few people. Mostly Gryffindors, really. All of the Weasleys do, and a few others. Most people have used the room once, but don't really know how it works or what it is."

"How often do you use it?" Albus continued.

"Well, probably a couple of times a month. If I need something in particular, or I have to hide something, or I just have to have some alone time, I'll use the room. It's usually empty, but once in a while you can't get in because somebody else is using it."

It was Rose's time to ask a question, "Do the teachers know about it?"

"I don't know," Molly answered slowly. "Maybe, but I've never seen one use it before."

Albus, Rose and Matt started heading off in different directions, each one's attention captured by something. Molly yelled out, "Wait! Rose! Don't you and Albus have to go back to your chess game?"

"Oh, well, um," Rose awkwardly started to stutter a bit. "W-well I g-g-guess we can stay her for a b-bit longer, maybe."

Molly smiled. "Sure, but I've got to go. My study group is meeting in a few minutes to prepare for our first lessons. Catch you guys later."

"Bye!" Rose yelled at her. Matt and Albus looked up and waved at her, also saying "Goodbye!"

Molly opened the door and was about to leave, when she suddenly turned around and said, "Guys! Don't go too deep! It's easy to get lost in here!"

Molly had sure been right about getting lost. The three of them ended up separated very quickly, with Rose getting hungry and heading for the door. She decided to wait for the other two, but they took half an hour to get back, each apologizing for getting lost.

The next day and a half merely consisted of the three of them playing chess, not wanting to get lost again. Rose dominated against Albus as per usual, but the games between her and Matt were a bit closer.

On September 4, the lessons finally started. All of the anticipation was over, and Albus would get to start learning magic. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as simple as that. First up was Charms with Professor Paget. She was nice enough, but Albus automatically took a disliking to her because the first lesson was purely theory. All they learnt was how to hold their wands properly and a few wand movements. The next lesson, Potions, wasn't the most interesting lesson either.

The Gryffindor students were all a bit late to Potions, as the classroom was in the dungeons, and very hard to find. However, all of the Slytherin students had already arrived and gone in. Albus was scared that they'd missed the start of the lesson because there already appeared to be potions brewing, but the old professor signaled them in with a big smile on his face.

"Come in, come in! I know it's a bit daunting down here, and it's a bit hard to find the classroom, but I do hope you'll get used to it and come a bit earlier next time."

Once everybody was seated across the classroom, the professor continued. "I am Professor Slughorn, and I daresay I've been teaching at this school for longer than anybody in the history of Hogwarts. Aside for Professor Binns of course, but it's quite hard to beat a ghost on that, don't you think?" He gave a bit of a chuckle, and seemed disappointed when none of the students laughed, but some of them had excited looks on their face at the idea of being taught by a ghost.

"I suppose you haven't had History of Magic yet, then? Oh well, you'll meet Professor Binns soon enough, I'm sure. Anyway, to the lesson at hand. Potions! I'm sure you're all very excited to get to work. More excited than my seventh year class was earlier, at least. Today, you'll be happy to hear that I plan on having you brew your first potions!"

The students were happy about this. Matt even let out a quiet "Yes!", as they had all found their purely theoretical Charms lesson extremely boring.

"Today we will be brewing a simple potion, just to get you started on. I feel like the ideal potion to begin with is a Cure for Boils. It's on page 19 of your textbook, and I suggest you get going now as it will take most of the lesson, barring any mistakes. Also, before you start, I should tell you that I will be awarding twenty house points to whoever brews the best Cure. The ingredients are on your desks, and everything you need to know will be in your text book. If you feel the need to ask anything at all, don't hesitate to ask me. So good luck, and may the best potion-master win!"

Everybody scurried to their cauldrons, with the incentive of house points fuelling them, especially since Gryffindor and Slytherin were such tough rivals. Albus opened his textbook to page 19, and immediately started to put his ingredients into the cauldron. He found that most of the hard work for brewing the potion was just stirring the right way and waiting, but still he seemed to have a very foul-looking potion. He peered over at Matt's, and his hopes looked a bit higher when he realized that Matt's looked the same. However, he looked over to what Rose was doing, and her potion looked to be absolutely perfect. She was focusing very hard on how she was stirring it, and it was clearly paying off as her potion both looked a lovely colour and smelled very nice.

When the lesson came to a conclusion, Professor Slughorn started going around and looking at everybody's potions. At each one he stopped and had a brief discussion with the student who had brewed it. He got to Matt's and stopped, asking "Did you follow the instructions in the text book?"

Matt answered quietly, saying "I tried, but it didn't even look like the same potion in the book. I couldn't recognize any of the ingredients."

"Why didn't you ask me for help?" Professor Slughorn inquired. Matt just looked down at his feet. "It's alright, Mr. Longbottom. Let me look at your text book."

Matt handed his open text book to Professor Slughorn, with what looked like tears welling up in his eyes. He hadn't enjoyed the lesson one bit.

"Ah, I see what's happened here. You've turned to page 29 instead of page 19. You were trying to brew a cure for noils with the ingredients of a cure for boils; of course you couldn't work out how to do it!"

Some of the Slytherins snickered at this, especially Cameron Carrow, who appeared to have already become the ringleader for a small group of Slytherins.

Professor Slughorn saw that Matt was feeling down, and said "Don't worry about it, Mr. Longbottom. This is only the first lesson, so I hardly expected you to be able to brew anything spectacular. We have a starting point, and we'll work from there."

This seemed to cheer Matt up a bit, but he was still quite upset with the stupid mistake he'd made. Next, Professor Slughorn got to Albus's potion, and gave a small chuckle. "Did you make the same mistake as Mr. Longbottom over here?"

Albus trembled, and stuttered out "No, professor. I was reading from the right page."

"Ah, well then. It appears we have some work to do. Don't worry about a rough start, though, Mr. Potter. Many students have a bad first day. I seem to remember that your father was an excellent student by the time he had reached his sixth year, even though his previous professor had thought him a failure with potions. Look to the future, and rejoice that it will be better than the present!"

Slughorn gave Albus a pat on the back, and then walked passed him to peer into Rose's cauldron. "Ah, Miss Weasley! This is magnificent! I daresay it could be the best in the class!"

Rose was beaming at these words. "Thank you, Professor." she spoke with an air of smugness about her.

"You really are as skilled as your mother. I am pleased that you took after her rather than your father. I don't even know why he chose to do potions in his sixth year, and I'm not sure he did either."

Professor Slughorn chuckled a bit at his own comment, and Rose joined in, too.

"Well done, well done," the professor said as he moved on to the next student. It seemed that everybody's potion had something wrong with it that could be improved. Vincent's was too thick, Kieran's was too hot, Lilian's was still bubbling because she'd been slow to start, but she excused herself by telling Slughorn "My mum's a witch, my dad's a muggle, so they didn't tell me I was a witch until I got my letter from Hogwarts!"

Elise's was almost spot-on, "Almost as good as Miss Weasley's!" exclaimed Slughorn as he got a whiff of the potion, but of course it wasn't quite as good.

After he'd inspected all of the Gryffindor's potions, he moved to the other side of the room to see how the Slytherins compared. He stopped for a long time to examine Cameron's, smiling the whole time, and Cameron looked at Rose with a smug smile on his face.

"Brilliant! Marvelous! I daresay this is almost as good as Miss Weasley's!"

The smile left Cameron's face and he went a bit red.

"I can tell you'll be one of the better students this year, won't you Mister Carrow?"

Cameron nodded, and put on a fake smile, but steam seemed to be coming from his ears. As Professor Slughorn moved on, the potions seemed to only decline in quality. Roxana's smelled wrong, Heath's was the wrong colour, and even his great-granddaughter, Wanda Slughorn, was exposed to criticism when he complained that her potion was jumping from the cauldron in an attempt to escape the heat.

Finally, Professor Slughorn got up to the last of the students, Scorpius Malfoy. Albus remembered that his Uncle Ron had told Rose to make sure she beat him in every test. He guessed that started now.

"Ah, marvelous, Mr. Malfoy. You really are just as clever as your father was. Twenty points to Slytherin!"

Albus's jaw dropped. He turned to Rose, and saw that her face was changing colour. Within seconds it was so red that you couldn't tell where her face ended and her hair began.

"Well, now that you've all had a chance to get to know what it's like in the Potions classroom, in our next lesson on Wednesday we will be going through some basic theory on a few common Potions ingredients. It's a long path from here to doing your N.E.W.T.'s at the end of your seventh year, but I assure you that many of you will still be there at the end, and going strong. Class dismissed."

The students all filed out of the classroom, making their way up to the Great Hall. Rose, however, was still furious, and as she exited the classroom she yelled out "Malfoy!"

Scorpius turned around, his face completely expressionless. Rose marched up to him, a head taller than him, with Albus and Matt scrambling to keep up in her wake. Rose started yelling right into Scorpius's face. "I looked at your potion. I know that you stole mine."

"Stole yours?" Malfoy spoke, Albus hearing his voice for the first time. It was much softer and quieter than he'd expected. "Please, why would I steal your potion? I wanted to win the house points, not have Slughorn patronize me like I'm a dog who needs to be trained with treats."

Rose gasped loudly at this. After taking a step back, she pulled her wand out, saying "Why you little-"

"Stop!" Albus interrupted, running between the two of them. "He's not worth it; leave him to sulk back to his other snakes."

"They're not all snakes!" Matt said. "I mean Norman is a great bloke, and he's in Slytherin!"

Rose frowned, and Scorpius walked away quickly.

"What was that about?" Albus screamed at Rose. "Accusing him of stealing your potion? Did you see him steal it?"

Rose was still red with rage. "No," she said.

"Did you ever leave your cauldron?" Albus inquired further.

"No," Rose said thoughtfully. She knew that she'd been watching it the whole time, making sure that she got everything perfectly right. There was never a moment when Scorpius would have been able to get some of the potion. "He must've used magic to do it!" she continued, her stubbornness getting the better of her. "You know, he could've used a summoning charm or something!"

"Right, a first-year using a summoning charm on the first day of lessons?" Matt asked condescendingly. He then added an extra tone of sarcasm. "That's so likely to happen, isn't it Al?"

"Let's just go to lunch," Albus said. The three of them made their way to the Great Hall where they ate lunch. Albus and Matt had now become accustomed to the amazing meals that the Hogwarts chefs, who they now knew to be house-elves, but to Rose the food was still, and would always be, an absolute miracle. Neither of her parents were any good at cooking, but she loved food. Every now and then they'd go to a fancy restaurant and eat something, or go to the Potter's house where both parents could cook amazingly, but for most of the time she was left with mediocre meals at best. By comparison eating at Hogwarts was heaven.


	4. Chapter 3: Flying

While eating in the Great Hall, Albus felt a tap on his shoulders, and then an old voice say "Hello, Mr. Potter!"

Albus turned around and saw that it was Professor Slughorn. "Hi, professor."

"I'd like to invite you to have dinner in my office tomorrow night. I'm trying to get to know some of the first-year students, and I think you're one of the top tier of your year. You too, Miss Weasley," he said, tapping Rose on the shoulder. "I think that you two are definitely going to be valuable students in your cohort."

"Sure, we'll be there," Albus said, a bit confused.

"Marvelous, marvelous. I'll see you two tomorrow, then. Have a good day," Professor Slughorn said as he walked off to see some other students.

"Well that was odd," Albus said. "I wonder what that was about."

"Why did he invite you guys and not me?" Matt questioned, the pitch of his voice going up significantly.

Albus was about to answer, but Rose spoke up, "It's probably because of our parents. I've heard about this. It's called the Slug Club. He invites the students that he thinks are going to become famous and he keeps them close so that he has heaps of famous contacts in the future."

"But I could be famous, too!" Matt said, his voice getting higher.

Albus and Rose looked at each other for a second, and then burst out laughing. Eventually, Matt joined in because of peer pressure, and they all went back to eating.

After lunch, the four of them had Herbology with Neville. It seemed interesting enough, but like Charms it was mainly theoretical stuff with the promise of getting to look at magical plants in later lessons. Neville went through the different types of plants, from semi-sentient to completely mundane. He explained that even some of the seemingly normal plants that muggles know about can have magical properties, and he started to explain the different ways that plants can be used for wands, brooms, divination, healing and brewing potions. Albus found it interesting enough, and saw that it could be applied to almost anything, but he failed to see the fun in it if all they did was sit in greenhouses looking after plants.

After Herbology came History of Magic. Everybody was really excited to have a lesson with an actual ghost, but they soon realized that this wasn't such a good thing.

The door to the classroom was unlocked, so all of the students were able to enter and choose a seat well before Professor Binns arrived. His arrival was by far the most interesting part of the lesson, as he came in through the walls rather than the door, being a ghost helping a lot with that.

All of the students were awed by his entrance, and they just stared at him for a few minutes. Suddenly, someone realized that he had begun talking and rushed for their quill. This started a panic amongst the room as no one knew where they were in the text book or what Professor Binns had started with. Binns paid this flurry no mind and simply continued talking about some goblin rebellion. Soon, people started giving up on taking notes, as his voice droned on and on about nothing in particular for so long. By the end of the lesson, the only person still trying to pay attention was Rose, and even she was barely managing to keep her eyes open. Half of the class was asleep when Binns dismissed them, and less than half realized what he had said. When they started to leave, everybody else followed, confused as to what had just happened.

The next day marked Albus's first Transfiguration lesson with Professor Abel. He realized very quickly that Dominique hadn't been exaggerating when she talked about how strict Professor Abel was. Jonty Abbott had the misfortune of coming to class two minutes late, and was immediately given a detention to be served that night along with the task of writing six inches of parchment about the importance of punctuality. The lesson itself was also very boring, with Albus wondering how he would ever be able to do anything in it.

Albus also had his first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, and he realized that this was going to be his favourite subject. Professor Smith was the nicest wizard that Albus had ever met, even though he heard from Matt that he had been in Slytherin in his time at Hogwarts.

Professor Smith started the lesson by giving a general overview of Defense Against the Dark Arts, saying that it could be considered the most useful subject they would do at Hogwarts. His voice boomed, deeper and more powerful than any that Albus had heard before.

"While, if you are lucky, none of you will ever have to duel with a dark wizard, or deter a dementor, or wrestle with a werewolf, you will all at some point in your lives experience fear. Fear of the dark. Fear of heights. Fear of the unknown. And fear both helps and hinders. In some ways, fear is our super power, but in others, it is our Achille's heel."

Professor Smith seemed to have a way of capturing the attention of every student with his mere voice. He spoke in a very excited tone, as if he had some very good news to tell, and was relishing in the moment of telling it.

"Fear empowers us. It gives us strength, and helps us in either our flight or our fight. However, it is not easy to manage. Sometimes, when in fear, we stop thinking properly. Sometimes, we put our fear in the wrong place. Somtimes, what we fear is actually nothing at all. This is why it is of the utmost important to control our fear. This super power, if we could control it properly, would surely unlock a great amount of power that we never knew we had. If we could focus our fear on the danger at hand, then there would be no danger that we could not overcome."

When Professor Smith stopped talking, the classroom became absolutely silent. That is until Howard dropped his quill onto the ground and had to pick it up, embarassed at his clumsiness. Professor Smith continued, unaffected by this incident.

"In this class, I will be teaching you and guiding you. If you stay with me until the end of your schooling, then there is no end to what you will be able to achieve. What I hope to help you with is not only defending yourself against the dark arts, but also defending yourself against everyday dangers. Controlling your fear is the key to success in this subject, and it is something that everybody can learn to do through understanding that all danger can be overcome."

All of the Gryffindors and Slytherins left the classroom that day in a daze. It was as if the wisdom of Professor Smith had consumed their whole beings during the lesson, leaving them just an empty shell. Everybody thought he was the best teacher except for Rose.

"What a load of rubbish," she said as they left the classroom. "'Fear is the key', as if! How can you do anything if you're scared?"

At the end of the day, Albus and Rose made their way to the dungeons to go to Professor Slughorn's office for dinner. On the way to his office, the two of them ran into Denise Ollivander, a first-year from Ravenclaw. Rose struck up conversation with her, and the two got to chat a bit about wands.

"Wands are my family business, you see," explained Denise. "Ollivanders have been making and selling wands for centuries. My granddad, Gilbert Ollivander, runs Ollivander's on Diagon Alley."

"Wow! I think that's where we got our wands, isn't it Albus?" Rose asked, trying to get Albus to join in on the conversation.

"Yeah, I think so."

Albus pulled out his wand. Poplar. 10 1/2". Dragon heartstring. He remembered quite clearly the day he'd gone with his family into Ollivander's Wand Shop. The old man Ollivander looked to be quite mad to Albus. His hair was gray and messy, and he had bags under his eyes that gave the impression he hadn't slept for days, yet his eyes were wide open. He jumped from place to place, getting Albus to try wand after wand, until finally he found one that apparently worked, and that became Albus's wand.

The conversation continued, and Rose and Denise started to describe their wands. "Mine's made of pear wood. It's thirteen inches long, which makes it a bit hard to hide, but it's alright. It's got unicorn heartstring."

"Really? Mine's thirteen inches, too! Mine's made of holly wood, though, but it does have a unicorn heartstring."

Albus had no idea what any of this stuff about wand lengths and heartstrings and wood meant. It didn't really matter to him, though. As long as he could do magic, he didn't care what his wand was like.

After the conversation had gone on for a while, the students arrived at Professor Slughorn's office, where they saw Jonty Abbott waiting outside of the door.

Albus went up to him and asked "Why haven't you gone in yet?"

"I'm too scared to open the door because I don't know if we're meant to be here yet," he replied, trembling a bit as he spoke.

Rose paid Jonty no mind and opened the door, causing Jonty to gasp a little bit. The four students looked in, and they could see that there were already several first-years in there at a table waiting for dinner. Professor Slughorn was also there. "Ah, here's the rest of the party. Miss Weasley! Mister Potter! Mister Abbott! Miss Ollivander! Please, do come in!"

The four of them walked slowly into the room and approached the table. The other students already sitting at the table were Sydney Randall from Hufflepuff, Rosalyn Dickinson from Ravenclaw, and Cameron and Scorpius from Slytherin. Albus sat down at an empty chair, with Rose and Jonty sitting either side of him.

Professor Slughorn spoke up, saying "I have a special treat for the eight of you. It's the finest food that Hogwarts can serve!"

As he finished speaking, plates with what looked like very fancy food appeared in front of all of the students. Professor Slughorn seemed to be impressed with himself, as he smiled and said "Dig in!" before settling down in a chair and eating.

The students weren't as impressed, and they sort of eyed the food suspiciously, never having seen anything quite like it. It was a very small portion of some kind of meat that looked like beef but tasted like a cross between pork and chicken, and there was some strange green vegetable that looked like someone had tried to draw broccoli, but then halfway through changed their mind and decided that they wanted to draw spinach. It was accompanied by a glass of what looked like wine, which excited Cameron, only for him to be disappointed when he tasted it and found out it was grape juice.

Albus was disappointed, and then looked over to Rose. He felt sorry for Rose, who was picking at her food with a fork. He knew that she really liked having large servings of food, and this would barely be a snack for her. It was only a matter of minutes before everybody had finished eating, and Professor Slughorn then vanished the plates.

"Now that the appetizer is done, we should begin the main course!"

This was a surprise for all of them. They thought that the appetizer, whatever it was, had been the only serving of food, but instead, before them appeared possibly the largest turkey in the world. It split itself into nine very generous portions and levitated onto everybody's plates. At this, people really started to dig in, especially Rose. When everybody seemed so eager to eat, Professor Slughorn spoke.

"Hold on, slow down everybody! You'd better save some room for dessert, it really is the best part of the meal."

Suddenly, everybody was much happier than they had been five minutes earlier. The turkey was delicious, as per Hogwarts standards, and nobody stopped eating until they'd finished all that was on their plates. When people started finishing, Rose being the first, Professor Slughorn began making awkward conversation with all of them.

It seemed that he knew a relative of everybody in the room, be it their parents, an aunt, an uncle, or even a grandparent in the case of Albus. Professor Slughorn would try to talk to the students about their relatives, who he appeared to keep in touch with well after they'd finished their schooling, but he seemed disappointed when he heard that Denise didn't want to go into wand-making like her father, grandfather, great-grandfather and so on.

Professor Slughorn did, however, seem very pleased that Scorpius's father had become a very respectable citizen. "When I knew him at Hogwarts, he seemed like one of the biggest trouble-makers I'd ever met. Not as much as your grandfather, Albus, but still quite a big trouble-maker. He was always sneaking around looking for danger and excitement, and I think he may have found it in the wrong places, but it is good to know that he turned out alright at the end, though not successful enough to go on the wall, I would say."

The first-years were all confused until Cameron spoke up, asking "What wall?"

"Why my wall, of course! Everybody who's anybody in the wizarding world wants to end up on my wall!" Slughorn answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"But, why would they want to be on a wall?" Rose asked.

"Because!" Slughorn said as he got to his feet. He walked over towards a wall that seemed to be covered in pictures of wizards and witches. Albus recognized a few of them. He noticed that each one was famous. "This is where I put the students who had great success. And that is where you should all strive to be." He started pointing at different pictures. "Here's Damocles Belby, inventor of the wolfsbane potion. Here's Barnabas Cuffe, former editor of the Daily Prophet. Here's Ambrosius Flume, owner of Honeydukes. And of course, my crowned jewel, Harry Potter! The boy-who-lived!

"I've been teaching at this school since the 1930's. I even retired once! I've traded words with every successful witch and wizard since then, and they've all been a part of the very gathering that you are now attending. I have great hopes for you students, and I have great faith that you will not let me down." He seemed to look directly at Scorpius here for some reason.

After this speech, Professor Slughorn returned to his seat and the night continued with very awkward conversation. Albus was just pleased when the night was finally over and they all returned to their common rooms. When he and Rose got to the Gryffindor common room, all of the other first-years had already gone to bed, so they decided to hit the sack, too.

The rest of the week seemed to go smoothly. There weren't any practical lessons, so all Albus had to do was pretend to pay attention to stay out of trouble. History of Magic was even better, because he didn't even have to pretend.

In their second week, the first-years got to start their flying lessons. Their teacher was Mister McLaggen, who was also the Quidditch referee at Hogwarts. Albus recalled that he had briefly played as a Keeper for the Ballycastle Bats before he got a career-ending injury in a match against the Pride of Portree that his family had gone to when he was five. After that, he started a career as a referee before he made one of the most controversial calls of all time at the 2015 Quidditch World Cup semi-final between Ireland and Brazil. He called a foul on a Brazilian beater, but gave the penalty shot to a Brazilian Chaser, which scored them the goal that put them back to only 140 points down. When the Brazilian Seeker caught the snitch moments later, Brazil won the match. Then he was all but forced to retire and decided to become the Hogwarts flying instructor.

"Right, I want everybody to stand next to your broom, have it about a foot away from you. Once you're in that position, I want you to say 'Up!' clearly. If you're lucky, the broom will jump into your hand first try. I don't expect that to happen to too many of you, though, unless you have practice with brooms. Now do it."

After Mister McLaggen had finished speaking, there was a chorus of people saying "Up!". A few select people had their brooms jump up into their hands straight away, Albus and Rose included. Matt struggled for a minute as his broom slowly made its way up to his hand. Yvonne was completely amazed by the way that the broom came up like magic. After a couple of minutes, it became clear that any brooms that hadn't come up yet weren't going to.

Mister McLaggen walked around to everybody. If their broom was already up, he didn't worry about them, but he gave everybody else a bit of a hand. He faced a problem when he got to Vincent, though, because Vincent didn't even seem interested in touching the broom.

"It's broken," Vincent said, his voice monotone and his face expressionless.

"No it's not," Mister McLaggen argued, "I checked them all this morning. If you can't pick it up with magic, you can just do it with your hand. It doesn't matter too much, but it's helpful if you're in a rush."

"It's broken," Vincent repeated, paying no attention to what Mister McLaggen had said.

"Again, it's not broken. Here," Mister McLaggen said, picking it up. "You don't have to pick it up with magic."

"It's broken," Vincent said yet again.

Mister McLaggen shoved the broom into Vincent's hand, saying "Here. You're welcome."

Vincent dropped the broom, and again said "It's broken." It was as if he was laying down a challenge for Mister McLaggen.

"No. It isn't," Mister McLaggen was more than annoyed by now.

"It's broken."

"Detention!" Mister McLaggen yelled, and Vincent picked up his broom, smiling.

As Mister McLaggen moved on to the next student to help them with their broom, Albus leaned over to Vincent and whispered "What was that about?"

"I'm trying to go back home." Vincent whispered back. "I figure that if I get enough detentions, they'll have no choice but to expell me."

Albus frowned at hearing this. He knew straight away that a plan like that was guaranteed to backfire at some point.

Once Mister McLaggen had gone around and seen all of the students, he addressed the whole class again. "Now that you've all got your brooms up, it's time to mount them."

Mister McLaggen picked up his own broom and demonstrated for everybody. It didn't take long before everybody had gotten on their brooms and was ready to take off flying. This wasn't to be, as Mister McLaggen had to go around to everybody to make sure they'd mounted their brooms in the correct way. When he got to Albus and Rose, he didn't have to correct them as they already knew perfectly well how to ride a broom. Vincent refused to mount his, and Mister McLaggen had to physically put the broom between his legs. Howard was much more cooperative, but had no idea what he was doing.

"No, your hands go this way. Let hand here, right hand here." Mister McLaggen said, demonstrating on his own broom.

"I know, I know!" Howard yelled back, getting frustrated. No matter how he put his hands on the broom, he just couldn't get his hands in the right position. "Which hand is my left hand?"

Eventually, Mister McLaggen had gotten around to everybody, and they were all ready to go. Everybody pushed off of the ground on Mister McLaggen's command. Everybody, that is, except for Vincent, who was still standing the same way he had been when Mr McLaggen left him.

"It's broken," he said, starting to sound like a broken record himself.

After he'd received another detention from Mister McLaggen, he took off as well. All of the students were floating just a few metres above the ground, and Mr McLaggen then started showing them how to manouver around on their brooms.

Some students were clearly more comfortable than others, and Mister McLaggen told them that if they were confident enough to fly around on their own for a bit, they could, but to let him focus on helping the less confident students. Albus and Rose immediately flew off, having races with each other around the place. They soon found out that there was quite a lot wrong with the Hogwarts brooms. They were old for a start. It looked like these were probably the same brooms that their parents had used when they had flying lessons. Then there was the way that they started to wobble whenever you sped up. Albus wondered if this was a defect, or if they were charmed by Mister McLaggen to do that so that the students wouldn't fly too fast. Rose's seemed to have a mind of its own sometimes, flying off to the left when it ought to go right and diving at the most random of times.

They were joined in their shenanigans by Kieran, who also seemed to have a lot of practice on a broom. "My dad's been teaching me since I was a little kid," he informed Albus and Rose. "I play quidditch with him all the time and I'm already better than him. I want to be a Seeker though. I hear the Gryffindor Seeker is a seventh year now, so I'm hoping I can replace her next year."

"Well you'll have to do better than Al," Rose said. "He's an amazing Seeker himself. His dad was the youngest Seeker of the last century."

Kieran's mouth opened wide and he looked at Albus, as if expecting confirmation. Albus nodded his head, and Kieran said "Wow, I'll have to take you on some time then."

"We could go now," Albus said. "Get something small and pretend it's a snitch, or something."

"Sure!" Kieran said excitedly. He pulled something small and flappy out of his pocket, and said "We could use this!"

Albus looked more closely and asked "Is that your hankerchief?"

"Yeah, it's small enough to get blown around the wind, kind of like a snitch!"

"I don't want to touch your hankerchief! That's disgusting!" Albus complained. "What about a branch from one of those trees?"

"Sure, I'll go get one. I'll drop it, and then the first person to catch it before it hits the ground wins!" Kieran suggested.

"That'd be so unfair, though. You'd be way closer to it than me, I'll drop it."

"Do you think I'm stupid? Then you'd have the advantage!"

"Guys!" Rose interrupted. "There's an easy solution. I'll drop it, then it'll be fair."

The two boys agreed to this, and Rose quickly flew to a nearby tree and pulled off a branch. The branch had a few leaves on it, so when she dropped it, it flew around a bit while slowly descending to the ground. "Perfect" she said to herself as she brought it back to Kieran and Albus.

She flew about ten feet above them and said "Are you guys ready?"

They both yelled back "Yes!", and she dropped the branch. The two of them raced towards it, flying up but both missing it. Instead, they had to turn around and dive at it. It was flying slower than them, so they had both reached it well before it hit the ground, but Kieran was quicker and caught it before Albus could.

"Yes! Victory is mine!"

Kieran started celebrating, but Albus quickly said "Want to make it first to three?"

By the end of the lesson, first to three had become first to ten, and Kieran had clearly dominated over Albus, catching it ten times while Albus had only managed to catch it twice. One of them was when Kieran got distracted by Howard falling off of his broom.

Albus was sorely disappointed, realizing that he wasn't even the best Seeker in his year, let alone in Gryffindor. He was going to let his dad down if he didn't make the team next year, he was sure of it. That night he went to bed disappointed, not even talking to Matt as he normally would have. This was the worst day he'd had at Hogwarts.

The next afternoon there were no flying lessons, but Albus got to go to watch the Gryffindor Quidditch team try-outs. As first-years weren't allowed to bring their own brooms to Hogwarts, and nobody wanted to ride the school brooms in an actual game of quidditch, none of the first-years tried out for the team. Half of the Gryffindor team had graduated the last year, though, so most spots were wide open for anybody to get. Albus went into the stands to watch along with Matt and Rose so that they could get their first look at the new Gryffindor team. There weren't many people watching, in fact more people were trying out.

The captain of the team was Albus's cousin, Victoire Weasley, who was also a prefect and Head Girl. She'd been captain since Teddy Lupin had graduated a few years ago, and Gryffindor had done great since then. They hadn't won the cup, but they'd come close. Since she was the Keeper, she wasn't hold try-outs for that spot in the team.

All three of the chasers from last year had graduated, so all three spots were open. Three of Albus's cousins were trying out for those spots: Dominique, Louis and Fred. Albus was hoping that all three of them would make the team.

Victoire had each of the people trying out for Chaser take five shots at her, and the ones that got the most shots in would make the team. Dominique went first, and she got all five shots in. Some of the other people that wanted to be a Chaser started complaining.

"You're going easy on her because she's your sister!" a sixth-year named Darcy Rhodes yelled at her.

"If it's so easy to stop her from scoring, why don't you come up here and show me?" she taunted. Darcy quieted down, partially because it was his turn next, mostly because of how much she intimidated him.

After a while, it was Louis's turn to go for it. Albus and Rose cheered for him, but a lot of other people started booing because Louis was Victoire's brother, and they were expecting another unfair try out.

Things didn't go as expected though. Louis went for his first shot. He went very wide for the left ring. So wide, in fact, that Victoire wasn't able to block it. Not that this mattered at all, because his shot had gone so wide that it had missed the ring by several yards.

Albus thought he heard Louis yell out something sounding like "Truck!", and was trying to figure out what exactly he had said. He went for his second shot. This time it was on target, but Victoire was easily able to stop it. He repeated it again, "Truck!", and Albus got very confused. This repeated itself every shot. Louis would miss or get blocked by Victoire, and yell "Truck!" quite loudly. It wasn't until Victoire warned him about his language that Albus realized what he had actually been saying.

Fred was the last person to try out for Chaser, and his try out went similarly to Louis's. Fred had a bit more luck, managing to get his fourth shot past Victoire, but it was obvious that he wasn't going to make the team.

In the end, Dominique made the team. The other two people to make the team were Darcy Rhodes, who had accused Victoire and Dominique of cheating, and the Head Boy, Barry Davies. After this, Victoire held the try outs for the Beaters. She got the three Chasers that made the team to fly around for a few minutes while one Beater at a time got to have shots at them.

"I won't be judging you on whether or not you hit them," she said, "But I will pay a lot of attention to your technique. If you have a lot of power, then as long as you get it near them you might make the team."

Albus again had a cousin trying out for this position, as Molly was among the group of Gryffindors holding bats. But the bigger thing to him was James trying out. Albus was always scared whenever they played as a family because of how hard James hit the Bludgers towards him, usually with good aim, too.

Seventh-year Henrietta Tuff went first. She'd been on the team the last year, and was one of the best Beaters in the school. Everybody expected her to get in the team, and she scared away all of the Chasers by hitting them each at least once, twice in the case of Darcy Rhodes.

James went next, and Albus was certain that he would make the team. He'd been just as strong as Henrietta with his bat. The only difference was that the Chasers didn't get scared away this time, so he got to hit them all a lot more.

The rest of the try outs were pretty pointless in Albus's opinion. He cheered for Molly when she got a try, but she was very inaccurate and didn't hit any of the three Chasers once.

The problem came when Victoire announced which two would become Beaters.

"I have decided," she said, pausing for dramatic effect, "That the Gryffindor Beaters this year will be..."

Victoire again paused for some time.

"Henrietta Tuff!"

A few people cheered at this, but everybody had been expecting it. "James is going to be the other one, for sure," Albus whispered to Rose and Matt. "He was great out there."

"And Fred Munson!"

Albus's jaw dropped. Everybody cheered upon hearing who their new Beater was except for Albus. "Why didn't she pick James?" he asked Rose, furious.

"She probably doesn't want people to accuse her favouratism," Rose answered. "She's already put Dominique in the team, and if she put two relative in then people might think she was just putting her family in instead of the best players."

"That's ridiculous!" Albus shot back. "James is way better than this guy."

"Don't worry," Rose said. "He'll make the team next year when Henrietta Tuff has graduated."

Finally, Victoire had the Seeker try outs. Everybody knew that it would just be the same Seeker as last year, Amelia Keys, but a few other people had decided to try out for the sake of it. Victoire released a snitch for all of them to race for, and Amelia had caught it within a few minutes. This repeated three or four times before Victoire called them all back in and said that Amelia would be in the team again.

After the try outs were finished, Albus ran out of the stand furious, and approached Victoire with Rose and Matt coming behind him.

He tapped Victoire on the shoulder to get her attention. She turned around, and when she looked down and saw him, she smiled. "Hey Al! What's up?"

"Why didn't you put James in the team?" Albus said fuming.

"Are you kidding?" Victoire asked, looking shocked. "He did horribly out there!"

"What are you talking about? He was amazing! He hit the Chasers so many times?"

"No he didn't. The only one he ever hit was Dominique, and that's because she kept taking dives for him."

Albus was taken aback by what Victoire was saying. He ended up just shaking his head and walking away from her with Rose and Matt. He knew that they weren't going to win the Quidditch Cup, and he knew it was going to be Victoire's fault.


	5. Chapter 4: The Statute of Secrecy

**A/N: So, this is a relatively short chapter, but it does have some significance in the long run. Please review, because if you don't review then I have no idea how much you like the story, and I want to make sure it's good enough.**

Albus spent most of the week furious about James not making the Quidditch team, but surprisingly it didn't seem to bug James at all. As James said, "It's only my second year, so I still have five more years to make the team."

Not many of his classes were going particularly well. Of course Rose was having a great time of all of them, getting top marks in the class for everything, but the only thing that Albus seemed to be any good at was Defense Against the Dark Arts. Professor Smith was a very good teacher, and Albus had already learnt so much.

One Friday morning at breakfast, Albus and Rose were talking about the next Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson.

"Professor Smith doesn't know what he's talking about!" Rose complained. "And his teachings methods are terrible. All he does is get us to figure it out ourselves because he doesn't know it."

"No, he gets us to figure it out ourselves because 'It's important to learn how to learn rather than just learn'." Albus was really defensive of Professor Smith, thinking him to be the best wizard in the world.

"Sure, believe what you want, but when it comes down to it, all he's good at is talking. He was never an auror, he doesn't know what it's actually like to be fighting against a dark wizard!"

"Do you?" Albus asked.

"Our dads are aurors," Rose answered, "So logically I should know more than him."

Albus thought about this. It didn't make any sense. Rose herself wasn't an auror, so it's not like she had ever faced a dark wizard. And their parents didn't talk about their work much because it was all so top secret. He knew that she was just trying to defend her point of view out of stubbornness, so he let it go.

Their conversation turned to their latest Transfiguration assignment when Matt arrived.

"How does she expect us to write twelve inches of parchment overnight about the rules of transfiguration?" Matt asked the other two. He and Albus had known almost nothing and copied practically all of Rose's essay instead of writing their own. Hopefully Professor Abel wouldn't notice this time.

Partway through breakfast, the Great Hall filled with a flurry of owls. Albus had been quite shocked the first time this happened, but he was accustomed to it by now. There was no mail for any of the first-year Gryffindors aside from Vincent getting an angry letter from home about his behaviour and Elise getting a copy of the Daily Prophet. After a couple of minutes, the noise level increased dramatically. Rose didn't notice because she was eating a massive pile of pancakes, but Albus and Matt both stopped to wonder what it was about. They saw that the biggest commotion was at the Hufflepuff table, as a large crowd had gathered around one particular spot.

"What's going on?" Matt asked.

"I don't know," Albus replied. "I'm going to go and see what's happening over there," he said, gesturing to the Hufflepuff table.

He approached the table, and saw that everybody was crowding around two particular students. He recognized one of them as Samuel Thorne, a first-year. The other one was a girl a few years older who looked quite a bit like Samuel. He assumed that she was his sister.

"I mean our father doesn't talk about much," Samuel was saying, "But we did know about this a few weeks before it was announced to the public, didn't we Kat?"

"What are you talking about?" the girl, who Albus now knew to be Kat, asked.

"You know, how he sent us those letters about it!" Samuel insisted.

"He hasn't sent us any letters all year. He's too busy with all of his ministry work."

"No, he definitely sent us one about this. Just a few days after the start of term."

This conversation devolved into a low-witted argument between the two siblings, and Albus left the crowd to return to Matt and Rose.

"So what's going on?" Matt asked.

"I don't know," Albus said honestly. "Something about the Ministry, I think. Samuel Thorne and his sister are at the centre of that group of people."

"Oh, that makes sense, their dad is the Minister." Rose said, finally stopping her eating for a moment.

"How did you know that?" Matt asked her.

"It's pretty obvious isn't it? Their last name is Thorne, the Minister's name is Reginald Thorne. He was a Hufflepuff, too."

"How do you know all this?" Matt again asked.

"I read," she replied simply, returning once again to her pancakes.

"Well we still don't know what's going on." Albus said, disappointed.

Suddenly, Elise slammed her copy of the Daily Prophet in front of them, and said "Here you go, geniuses."

Albus and Matt looked at the newspaper, and their jaws dropped. One the front page in massive writing was the Headline "Minister to Hold Vote on Statute of Secrecy".

The news came as a massive shock to everybody at Hogwarts. Professor Smith was very distracted in Defense Against the Dark Arts, and he ended up just letting the students talk amongst themselves for the whole lesson. Wild conspiracy theories were being thrown around, like "I heard that the Minister was replaced with a werewolf who wants to turn all of the muggles into other werewolves!" and "Maybe the Ministry wants to execute all of the muggles so that we don't have to worry about them anymore."

"Serves them right, too." Cameron Carrow announced quite loudly. "All they do is sit around all day. How can we allow such filth to walk around in our country?"

This upset almost the entire class. In fact, the only people that seemed to not care were Cameron's little group of blood-purists.

"Why do you guys have to be so oppressive of other people just because they're different from you?" came a loud, angry voice. Albus looked around for a minute before he could locate the source. It was Vincent.

"Just because someone can't do magic, doesn't give you the right to kill them or hurt them. Just because someone's parents weren't a witch or a wizard, doesn't make them any less of a witch or wizard themselves. How would you like it if someone attacked you because you have brown hair?"

Albus thought Vincent had used more words in this outburst than in the entire time he'd been at Hogwarts.

After a few silent seconds, Cameron replied with "I'm sorry, all I could hear then was 'I'm a whiney mudblood! I'm a whiney mudblood!'"

Cameron's friends all burst into laughter at this, but Vincent lost it. He ran up to Cameron and punched him in the face.

Everybody across the room gasped at this sudden action, but Professor Smith still seemed very distracted and unattentive. He didn't even look up from whatever he was doing at his desk, and everybody assumed that he hadn't noticed what had just happened.

Cameron got up and was about to punch Vincent right back, but Rose quickly ran up and got between them.

"Stop!" she yelled. Her voice was high-pitched and loud, and Albus thought there wasn't a soul in the castle that hadn't heard her. Yet Professor Smith still hadn't noticed the commotion.

Rose turned to Vincent and opened her mouth, ready to start scolding him, but instead she turned around quickly and punched Cameron in the face, again knocking him to the ground.

After this, a massive fight broke out. Soon, not a single student in Gryffindor or Slytherin wasn't involved. It was Cameron and his gang against everybody else, and it was a fist-fight until Cody Bulstrode pulled out his wand and fired some spell at Howard. All that anybody saw was a flash of yellow hit him in the face, and suddenly tadpoles started to come out of his ears. Howard fainted, but the tadpoles just kept coming out and onto the floor. It was at this point in time that Professor Smith finally noticed what was going on around him.

"What is going on here?" he yelled at the students. This was the first time that he'd ever been angry with them, and everybody got quite scared of him, stopping what they were doing and looking at him. "I cannot believe this. The second I take my eyes off you, you start fighting and cursing one another! This is despicable behaviour for students of one of the world's most prestigious wizarding schools. Twenty points from Gryffindor and Slytherin for each of you. I think that's two hundred from each house. Mr. Macmillan, could you please escort Mr. Low to the hospital wing. I believe he's in need of some assistance. The rest of you will sit at your seats silently until I dismiss you all from class."

That's how the rest of the lesson went. Kieran took Howard to the hospital, not returning, and everybody else sat down silent until Professor Smith finally dismissed them and they made their way to Herbology.

Neville was a bit less distracted, and he actually taught them, but he was still curious and asked Samuel Thorne a few questions about his father.

"So you already knew that this was happening?" Neville asked Samuel.

"Yeah, he sent me a letter about it a couple of weeks ago. Apparently he didn't send it to my sister, though. I guess he just trusts me with information more."

"Of course. Mr. Bell! Put that down! You're meant to be pruning it, not eating it! So do you know why he's doing it?"

"Not really, he didn't tell me much in my letter. All he said was that he'd decided he was going to have the vote and that the public wouldn't know for a while, so not to tell anyone. That's why I didn't tell anyone about it until today. Because if I had, then I would have been revealing Ministry secrets and might go to Azkaban. I was so close to telling Jonty Abbott, so I almost had to go to Azkaban. I mean it's not everyday you get to hear about top secret Ministry stuff. Unless you're me, of course. My dad tells me stuff all of the time."

"Ah, very curious. Mr. Bell! Could you please put that down! Outriscus may not be a carnivorous plant, but if you continue to insist on putting its branches in Mr. Low's ears, it may do some damage! Anyway, what else is happening in the Ministry at the moment?"

"Oh, heaps. Mostly about the vote, I think. People really want to change it. It should be done in about a month, though, then the really big stuff is happening."

"Mr. Bell, if you don't put that plant down right now, I will have to give you a detention! This is supposed to be a lesson on looking after an Outriscus plant, not a lesson on whether Mr. Low can be used as a plant pot! Anyway, Mr. Thorne, can you tell me what this 'big stuff' is that's about to happen?"

"No, I'd have to go to Azkaban if I did tell you, or worse. I take this very seriously, being the son of the Minister and all."

By this point, Albus was quite sure that Samuel was making it all up. There was no way that this would all be sorted out in a month, and as if he knew what else was happening in the Ministry. If it was so top secret, then why would his dad tell him about it?

Albus then stopped listening to this conversation, focused on looking after his Outriscus plant with Matt. It wasn't easy, though, and he had to get a lot of help from Rose and Elise. Vincent just seemed to be figuring out how many different ways he could annoy Howard with the plant in an attempt to get a detention, and it worked brilliantly.

After lunch, the first-years had History of Magic. This was normally sleeping time for most of them, but people were instead talking to each other about the Statute of Secrecy. Professor Binns seemed not to care about it at all, and he just droned on about medieval England for the whole lesson.

Normally, Albus would've just zoned out whatever Binns had been talking about, but his attention got diverted to the ghost when Prissy Greengrass spoke out saying, "But Merlin did get married. I know because I'm a direct descendant!"

Professor Binns looked surprised, clearly he hadn't been interrupted in class for decades.

"It is a well-known fact that Merlin left no descendants. He never married, and never had children. It is suggested that he instead fell in love with the world around him, and metaphorically he married nature," Professor Binns explained. What he was saying was quite interesting, but he managed to say it in a way that took all of that away and made it sound like the most boring piece of information in the world.

"No, I'm definitely descended from him. My parents told me so!" Prissy insisted. "It's what makes me so skilled at magic!"

A bunch of people snickered at this, knowing full well that she was one of the worst at magic in their year. But Albus soon realized that _some_ people were taking her seriously?

"Woah, that's so cool!" said Victoria Parkinson, totally in awe of her. The group of blood-purists were all staring at her like she was the most amazing witch in the world now. "I heard he was in Slytherin!"

"Oh, please," Rose interrupted their admiration of Prissy. "As if you're descended from Merlin. He never married! How could he have kids? And as if the greatest wizard of all time was a Slytherin!"

Cameron Carrow stood up smiling maliciously, and for a moment it looked like there was going to be a repeat of their Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, but Professor Binns surprisingly intervened.

"Class, please settle down," he droned. "We have so much to get through in this lesson and I don't want us to get behind on our course."

Cameron sat back down, the smile gone from his face, and he started whispering something to Cody Bulstrode. Professor Binns went back to droning, having moved on to some goblin rebellion.

"Damn Carrow," Rose whispered to Albus. "He wants a fight so badly that he'll fight over something as stupid as that. As if Greengrass is a descendant of Merlin! Everybody knows that he never had children!"

"It's not Carrow I'm worried about so much as Bulstrode," Albus whispered back, gesturing to the Slytherins. Cameron was still whispering something into Cody's ear, and Cody was staring directly at the two cousins, his eyes not moving or blinking.

Albus went to sleep while Rose went back to taking notes. Every now and then Rose would accidentally nudge Albus when she got too enthusiastic in her note-taking, and Albus would see that Cody Bulstrode was still staring at them.

Eventually the lesson ended, and Rose woke up Albus and Matt so that they could go to Transfiguration. As soon as they entered the room, Professor Abel asked for their essays, which they reluctantly handed up. She assigned them a few pages in their text book to read before getting them to again try to transfigure a match into a needle. They'd done this every lesson, but still only a few students had been able to do it. In the meantime, she began marking the essays that they had written.

Albus started to get very paranoid as Cody Bulstrode again spent the whole lesson staring at them menacingly. He couldn't focus on any of his work, but Matt got very excited as he managed to get his match to turn pointy about halfway through the lesson. This offered Albus enough distraction to get back to his work for the rest of the lesson.

When the lesson was coming to a close, Professor Abel started to hand people back their essays, now marked. However, Albus noticed that she didn't give his back. He looked around and saw that he wasn't alone. About half of the Gryffindor students hadn't received their marks.

Professor Abel stood at the front of the classroom and said "Holt, Longbottom, Macmillan, Parker, Potter and Weasley. Please stay behind, I need to have a word with you. For the rest of you, class dismissed."

Albus started shaking out of nervousness, and he saw that the other five people who were supposed to stay behind were the ones that hadn't gotten their essays back. He thought that it was because they'd done badly, but then he realized that it couldn't be that because Rose and Elise were there. He then remembered that he and Matt hadn't done the essay, they'd just copied Rose's and handed it in. He deduced that they were in very big trouble.

"It is very rarely in my class that I have to deal with plagiarism. It happens, but rarely enough that it can be ignored when it does. However, when it happens repeatedly, I have no choice but to intervene, and this is possibly the worst case that I have had in my time as a teacher."

Albus shrunk into the desk as she was speaking, and he could see that Rose's jaw had dropped at what she was saying. Elise looked just as shocked, but Kieran and Brianna just looked guilty.

"I don't know whose work this is, but it is brilliant work and deserves an 'O'. I would like to know which two of you actually wrote the essay, and which four of you decided that it was beneath you. So, let me ask you. Who copied someone else's work?"

Nobody answered.

"Fair enough, you don't want to get in trouble. But I should let you know that if you had been honest and told me immediately, you only would have received a week of detention and lost your house ten points each. Instead, I will have to make a harsher punishment. Whoever copied will be given a month of detentions and Gryffindor will lose one hundred points. I will write letters to each of your parents telling them what you have done. Now I will ask again, and I recommend that you answer honestly to avoid more sever punishment. Who copied someone else's work?"

Rose kicked Albus, so he meekly put his hand up. Matt followed suit, and after a moment so did Kieran and Brianna.

"Right, so the four of you will have detention with me every night for a month and be given 'T's for your work. Gryffindor will only be penalized one hundred points. Holt, Longbottom, Macmillan and Parker, you four are to meet me in my office as soon as dinner is finished. Miss Weasley and Miss Parker, I do apologize if this has inconvenienced you at all. You may now be dismissed."

The six Gryffindors left the room heart-broken. In just one day, they had lost Gryffindor three hundred house points. Albus wasn't even sure they had that many to begin with. There was now no way they were going to win the House Cup. And what were his parents going to think? James had always been a trouble-maker, but he'd always been better at keeping himself out of anything like that. Now he'd be just as bad as James.

They were walking down the corridor when they were suddenly ambushed by people yelling "Petrificus totalus!"

Suddenly Albus couldn't move. All he could do was breathe. He looked around, and saw that the same thing had happened to the other five of them. It was then that Albus saw who had attacked them. It was the Slytherins. Carrow, Bulstrode and Roxana Nott were there, along with three fourth-years that Albus didn't know.

One of the fourth-years walked in front of them. "Allow me to introduce myself," he said. "My name is Merrill Bonham. These are Glenn Coel and Austin Holmes. My cousin Cody here tells me that you lot have been bullying him and his friends. Here's the deal: you bully them, then we retaliate. Slytherin looks out for their own."

Albus was petrified and terrified. The six Slytherins approached them, each taking a different Gryffindor, and they started kicking and punching them. Soon all of the Gryffindors were on the floor bleeding. With a wave of his wand, Merrill released them from their body binds, and said "If you even think about telling anybody what just happened, you'll wish you'd never been born."

Albus got up and watched them all leave. He and Rose then helped Matt to his feet, he'd been the worst hurt. They started carrying him, deciding to take him to the hospital wing.

"Thanks, Potter!" Kieran yelled at him. "Look what you've gotten us into!"

"It wasn't his fault!" Rose yelled back. "Blame Bulstrode! He's the one that got the older Slytherins involved!"

"Bulstrode wouldn't have had to if it wasn't for you lot! You just had to go and fight them. You could've let it go, but instead you decided to fight."

"You joined in!" Albus threw back at him. "You were busy punching up Carrow before Professor Smith intervened!"

"That's only because he hit me first!" Kieran responded. "If it wasn't for you lot starting the fight, for a guy who doesn't even want to be here, none of this would've happened!"

Elise and Brianna started walking off, trying to stay out of the argument, and Kieran reluctantly followed, not wanting to be on his own with the other three. Albus and Rose then took Matt to the Hospital Wing to have him healed, not telling anyone what had happened out of fear of what they would do to them if they did.


	6. Chapter 5: DADA and Death Eaters

September became October, and things were going badly for Albus. The rest of Gryffindor had unanimously decided that the first-years were the worst people in the world because they'd managed to lose three hundred house points in one day, virtually ending all chance of Gryffindor winning the House Cup. Even Albus' family was starting to hate him for giving the house a bad name and plagiarizing. At least the detentions with Professor Abel weren't so bad as Albus had thought they would be.

It turns out that the four of them weren't the only ones having detention with Professor Abel most of the time. In fact, quite often her office was filled with so many students that they had to do their detentions in the classroom. The detentions mostly consisted of writing out Transfiguration essays, and they weren't graded on them, so Albus could let his mind wander while he mindlessly wrote out random things about Transfiguration. It was actually quite helpful, too, since he now had to write his own essays anyway, so he got plenty of practice for them. Another upside was that he no longer had to go to Slughorn's dinners, and even better was that he was no longer invited to them due to his failures as a student to that point.

The one downside of having to go to detention with Kieran every night was having to go to detention with Kieran every night. Kieran had developed a massive hatred towards Albus due to blaming him for all of their misfortune. Albus was stuck wondering how he'd managed to make so many people hate him in just the first month of school. He really had outdone himself.

Possibly the worst part of everything was the way that his mother had responded to him getting into so much trouble. She sent him a howler the next day and beyond that stopped communicating with him entirely. His father had a different way of looking at everything, though. He had sent him his own letter the day after, apologizing.

 _Dear Albus,_

 _I'm sorry about your mother sending you a howler. I couldn't stop her, you know what she's like when she gets angry._

 _I'm talking to her, and trying to get her to realize that it's not so bad. Professor Abel is a really strict teacher, in some ways over the top strict. I used to work with her at the Ministry, and getting in trouble with her isn't such a big deal._

 _But as for copying Rosie's work, don't tell anyone I said this, but good job. The only way I got through half of Hogwarts was by copying your Aunt Hermione's work. Just make sure that you actually learn everything before your O.W.L.'s._

 _From Dad_

This letter had made him feel much better. Albus was a bit surprised to find out that Professor Abel had worked at the Ministry, but it comforted him that his father understood how strict she was. The most unexpected and also most entertaining letter had come from his Uncle Percy. He didn't even know how his uncle had managed to find out about what had happened, but his response had been quite predictable.

 _To Albus Severus Potter,_

 _I would like to give you some advice on your schooling. It appears as though you have made some rather bad decisions early on in your education at Hogwarts, and I believe that it is my place as your uncle to give you some helpful pointers for your future endeavors at the place that many future potential employers will be looking at your record._

 _Firstly, I must warn you that plagiarism is a bad habit to get into. It will not only lower your grades, but also the amount of learning that you get out of the school. And of course, that's what school is all about. You must learn while you are at school in order to achieve all that you want later in life and have a successful career._

 _Secondly, I would like to remind you that getting low grades is an easy way to ensure that you will not become a prefect come your fifth year, not to mention Head Boy come your seventh year. I will remind you that I was both of these, and I made it an easy decision for the then Headmaster of Hogwarts to make by standing out from the crowd, which makes me the ideal person to help you achieve this. You need to keep your standards of work up in order to impress teachers. I understand that Professor Abel is hard to impress, which means that if you are diligent in her class and exceed all expectations, it will be quite impressive to other teachers. It is clear that you haven't had the best start to this, but it is important to make a good impression on her from now on. In your detentions, I recommend that you act with the utmost respect. Only speak when spoken to and obey exactly what she says to do. If you can be a good student even in detention, this will show that you have very good resilience, a quality very deeply associated with prefects._

 _Finally, you must also remember not to fall in with the wrong crowd. As someone whose friends at Hogwarts were always of the better variety, I recommend that you end your friendship with this Matthew Longbottom immediately in order to avoid further incidences such as this one. To increase the effect of this, you should avoid being associated with his kind as well. Spend more time with your cousin Rose, as she is a model student. If you were also to befriend the Gryffindor prefects, I'm sure this would help you greatly. You have two cousins who are already prefects, and I'm sure that they would be happy to introduce you to the others. Victoire is even Head Girl, so if you make sure that people associate you with her, it will benefit you greatly._

 _Do enjoy your time at Hogwarts, and don't waste it making poor decisions that will affect the rest of your life._

 _Regards, Percy Ignatius Weasley_

The funniest thing about that letter had been the letter he'd received the next day from his aunt Audrey.

 _Albus,_

 _I'm dreadfully sorry about the letter your uncle Percy sent you yesterday. If I'd known about it there's no way I would have let him send it. I do hope he didn't say anything too stupid. I'll try to keep a closer eye on our owl so that he doesn't get up to anything later on._

 _From Aunt Audrey_

The two people that didn't blame Albus, Rose and Matt for everything were Vincent and Howard. This wasn't much consolation, though. Vincent was still in the mindset that if he got into enough trouble he wouldn't have to stay at Hogwarts, and Howard had become the most annoying person in the world to Albus.

Albus did get some break from people hating him whenever conversation turned to the Statute of Secrecy. Everybody wanted to share their opinion on what should happen, and based on the Daily Prophet, that wasn't just true in Hogwarts. Unfortunately, a referendum on the statute had to be schedule for Easter the next year because the Ministry was so busy.

What really made this time bearable for Albus was the Room of Requirement. If he was ever bored or feeling upset, he'd go into the room and spend hour after hour by himself or with Matt and Rose.

Albus' grades didn't improve at all. And it didn't help that now every teacher was on the lookout for plagiarism. He and Matt had to do all of their own work, and Rose refused to help them at all, so they were starting to fail some subjects. The one that they all enjoyed, however, was still Defense Against the Dark Arts. After his explosion during the fight, Professor Smith went back to his nice self. He even went so far as to apologize for his "outburst", and promised that it wouldn't happen again.

One Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson, Professor Smith was talking about curses, when Lilian asked him a question.

"Are some witches and wizards better at curses than other? I mean, since my mum was a witch but my dad was a muggle, does that mean I won't be as good as someone who their dad was a wizard?"

"That's a very interesting question," Professor Smith replied. "There has been much debate about this for centuries. For instance, it is my understanding that the four founders of Hogwarts disagreed with each other on whether or not to teach muggle-born witches and wizards. Godric Gryffindor was a well-known advocate of muggles' rights, and it was his firm belief that anyone could become great. This is most certainly true. A wonderful example for us all is what happened in the war against Voldemort."

Some of the students flinched at hearing Voldemort's name. Others, particularly the muggle-borns, seemed intrigued as they had heard little to nothing of Voldemort before.

"The public knows very little of the life of Voldemort before his rise to power. It is assumed that he was a pure-blooded wizard, as he was of the belief that pure-blood wizards were superior, and he went to great lengths to try to kill anybody that so much as disagreed with him. His opposition, Harry Potter, was a half-blood wizard who believed exactly the opposite. He believed that there was no difference between someone whose family has been magical for generations and someone who didn't find out they were a wizard until their eleventh birthday, possibly because that was his own story."

There were a lot of confused looks around the classroom. Everybody was lost.

"I can see that some of you are unfamiliar with this story. Would you like me to tell you the whole story?" Professor Smith left this question in the air, but nobody answered out loud. They all just stared at him expectantly.

"Very well, I will tell you. Back in the 1970's, the dark wizard Voldemort was at large. He was killing anybody that stood against him, and even some that stood with him. They were dark days, and nobody knew who they could trust. One day, he went to the house of the Potter family."

Albus figured he could zone out here. He'd heard this story from his Uncle Ron so much that he was now bored of it. He probably knew more than Professor Smith about it.

"At this time, the Potter family consisted of three people. There was James Potter, a pure-blood wizard, his wife Lily Potter, who was a muggle-born, and their one-year-old son Harry Potter. Voldemort killed both James and Lily Potter, before trying to kill Harry Potter. People aren't quite sure what happened, but somehow the curse he had used to kill Harry Potter rebounded and hit him, almost killing him. He was then barely alive for over a decade before his servants brought him back. By this time, Harry Potter was a teenager, and a quite good wizard himself. Harry Potter fought back against Voldemort, being heralded as the Chosen One after defeating him as an infant, and defeated him. He was only seventeen years old when he achieved this. He now works for the ministry as an Auror. This all happened well before any of you were even born.

"Now, the question is this: what made Harry Potter so special? No one knows how he survived Voldemort's attempts to kill him. Well, someone might, but we don't. Regardless, the question remains for us. What makes him so special? I'm going to give you the answer: nothing."

Albus was taken aback by this. He knew how his dad had survived, and he knew it wasn't just nothing. He knew that his grandmother had died to save his dad. It definitely wasn't nothing.

"Even if we did know how he survived, it would still be nothing. He survived because fate necessitated it. Now you may not believe in fate, and I'm not sure I do, but look at it this way: every war ends. Either Voldemort lost and we celebrate whoever defeated him as a hero, that's Harry Potter in this case, or Voldemort won and, like it or not, we celebrate him as the hero. His ideals become the ideals of the country. That may take years, decades or even centuries, but at some stage every war ends and the winner gets to write the history books. If Harry Potter had not been the hero, but Voldemort had still been defeated, there would have been another hero. If Voldemort had died but the Death Eaters had one the war, one of them would have been the hero. Fate necessitates a hero. Harry Potter just happened to be the right person at the right place at the right time for it to be him. There's nothing special about that."

That was ridiculous. Albus was starting to get very angry at Professor Smith, indeed. And to think he used to adore Professor Smith.

"Harry Potter is one of the greatest wizards of our time. But if you think about it, there's nothing special about that. There are always great wizards of our time. He's nothing special. I want you to think about that. In twenty years' time, you may be the one that's a hero, or a villain, or both!"

Professor Smith looked around the room and saw that there were a lot of blank expressions looking back at him.

"Class dismissed."

Everybody left the classroom confused. For once, it seemed, nobody had understood what Professor Smith was on about.

"What was all that nonsense about dad not being a good wizard? He beat Voldemort, didn't he?" Albus asked Rose.

"I don't think that's the point," Rose said slowly, trying to get her head around things. "I think he was talking about…" she trailed off; Albus couldn't actually hear was she was muttering it was so quiet. To be honest, he didn't want to hear it either. Anything that made his dad look bad or anything short of amazing was evil to him.

At lunch after the lesson, all of the first-year Gryffindors were talking about what Professor Smith had said.

"I think it makes sense," Elise said. "Someone was always going to stop Voldemort eventually. It just ended up being Harry Potter."

"Yeah, but doesn't that make him special?" Albus asked. "I mean, nobody else could've, so it had to be him. He was the most powerful wizard!"

"But what if Voldemort had killed him? Then someone else would've stopped him, right?" Elise replied.

"Yeah, but Voldemort didn't kill him because he was special!" Albus yelled aggressively, his face starting to go a bit red.

"I think little Albus is just upset because he's not special anymore!" teased Kieran. "What's wrong Al? Wanna cry to your mummy and daddy because the mean person said you weren't special?" he said in a baby voice.

Elise and Brianna giggled at this, but Albus completely lost it. He stood up abruptly, trying to hold back tears, and then he walked away from the Gryffindor table and made his way out of the Great Hall. He ran up the stairs and into the common room where he broke into tears. Why did this matter so much to him? Surely he should be able to take a bit of teasing, right?

"It's just Kieran," he told himself. "What does Kieran know? It's just Kieran. And Brianna. And Elise. Wait, Elise is pretty smart, is she right?"

Albus started to wonder about whether or not his dad really was special.

"Of course he is," he said to himself. "No one else was good enough to beat Voldemort, but he was. He's a very special wizard. Professor Smith doesn't know what he's talking about!"

Albus redirected his thoughts to Professor Smith. How could such a nice person say such horrible things? Albus was going to struggle to get over this.

For the remainder of the day, Albus was very quiet. He slept through History of Magic, but that wasn't anything unusual. It was Transfiguration that people started noticing it.

"Now, class, today we will be moving on from matches and needles to something a bit more complicated, but hopefully you'll be able to keep up," Professor Abel said to everyone. "Today, we will look at transfiguring an inanimate object into a living thing for the first time."

Albus started dozing off during Professor Abel's lecture. She walked around the classroom as she spoke, Albus could hear her footsteps. He let his thoughts wander as he rested his head on his arms, Transfiguration was too hard to focus on at the moment. He thought about Quidditch instead. The first match was coming up soon, Gryffindor against Slytherin. He had seen the Gryffindor team, and watched them practice a few times. They were looking very good, but would be better if James was on the team. Sure, Henrietta Tuff was a very good Beater, but James would make it the perfect team. He didn't know what the Slytherin team was like, but he had heard that their captain was only a fifth-year, which some people were unhappy about because it was only her second year on the team. That bully Merrill Bonham was also on the team, a Chaser. Albus hoped that they smashed Slytherin, just so he could see the look of despair on Cameron's face when it happened.

He started daydreaming about when it would be his turn to be on the Quidditch team. He could see it already. He'd embarrassed Kieran in the tryouts and become the youngest Seeker to play in a house team since his dad had done it in his first year at Hogwarts. In fact, he'd done so well that he'd been made Gryffindor captain and gotten to choose the team. He'd put James in, kicking out Fred Munson. Victoire had even come all the way to Hogwarts to apologize for being mean and not letting James on the team to begin with.

That was behind him now. He was playing Ravenclaw, if they won by a hundred points they would win the Cup. He was flying above the rest of the game where things were going chaotic. Gryffindor was down by 50 points, so he had to catch the snitch quickly for them to win. Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of it: a small glimmer of gold flying through the sky very quickly. He immediately went into a dive, chasing it, leaving the Ravenclaw Seeker for dead behind him. Everyone was cheering his name as he approached the snitch. "Potter! Potter! Potter!"

He got closer, so close he could almost reach it. He could taste victory through the sweat dripping onto his lips. He lunged forward on his broom, reaching out with his hand to grab the troublesome snitch, but he was suddenly nudged by something next to him. Was it the other Seeker? Had he somehow managed to catch up?

No. It was Matt. He was nudging Albus awake. "Wazgongon?" Albus asked as he opened his eyes, and he suddenly noticed something, or rather a lack of something. Professor Abel wasn't talking anymore.

Albus looked up in dread, and saw the intimidating figure of Professor Abel staring down at him from above. "Twenty points from Gryffindor, Mr. Potter. And you'll be joining me in detention for two more weeks. If you ever fall asleep in my class again, you will not be so lucky."

The rest of the lesson was a blur. No one in the class aside from Scorpius Malfoy had been able to transfigure their shoe into anything that looked remotely like a frog. Even Malfoy's was poor, looking like a green shoe with eyes and legs that kept hopping about, but Professor Abel was still proud of how well his had turned out. After the lesson, everybody went back to their common rooms and started doing their homework. For Albus and Matt, that meant watching Rose do her homework and trying to copy her as best they could without being so obvious that they would get caught. Albus saw a similar arrangement across the room with Elise, Kieran and Brianna.

Things were going well, and Albus was about halfway through his essay about the principles behind transfiguring inanimate objects into live animals, when suddenly Lilian came up to their table and interrupted all of them.

"Guys, I've done some research in the library!" she said excitedly. "I think I know why Professor Smith was saying what he said earlier! He was in Slytherin!"

"We already know that," Matt said. "But not all Slytherins are bad people. Like Norman! He's a great bloke."

"I know, I know. But this was nineteen years ago!" Lilian insisted. "Back then, the only people in Slytherin were Death Eaters!"

"Wasn't Norman's dad in Slytherin?" Matt asked.

"I don't know, people don't have to be in the same house just because they're in the same family," Lilian replied.

"Well he probably was, and I'm sure he's a great bloke, too."

"Look, Professor Smith was at Hogwarts at the same time that Voldemort was around! I think he was a Death Eater!" Lilian said.

"Don't be ridiculous!" Albus said. "All of the Death Eaters are in Azkaban, my dad made sure of it."

"Lilian," Rose said with a very serious look on her face. "Professor Smith is not a Death Eater, and you shouldn't make accusations like that when you have no evidence."

"But everyone I've talked to thinks I'm right! And my mum is a witch, but my dad is a muggle, so-"

"Wait," Rose interrupted. "Who have you talked to about this?"

Lilian thought for a second. "Well Vincent first, but he didn't care, he was seeing how many pages of his Potions textbook he could balance on top of Madam Pince's head before she noticed. Then I saw Evan Mathewson, and he agreed with me, but said I should do more research, but I didn't have time because Yvonne was there and I had to tell her. Then I ran into a few seventh-years I don't know, but I told them, too. You're the last ones in the common room I've told, but that's it, I think."

Rose and Albus looked at each other, and Rose slammed her head onto the table.

"Hey!" Matt shouted. "Look what you made me do! My essay is ruined!"

"Sorry guys, I have to go talk to some Hufflepuffs who wanted to know what I was talking about. Catch you at dinner," Lilian said as she ran off towards the portrait of the Fat Lady.

"Merlin's Beard!" Rose yelled out once Lilian was out of earshot. "Is there anything between her ears?"

"Well she might be right," Albus said. "I mean he was saying some pretty evil-sounding stuff this morning."

"You're just angry at him because he said your dad wasn't special," Matt said. "He's not the smartest guy, and it's hard to figure out what he's talking about half the time, but he's not evil."

Albus had to admit that Matt was right. Professor Smith had been a very kind teacher, much more than any of the others anyway. Most importantly, he seemed to almost never give them any homework. Everything was done in class and Albus never had to stress about it because it was the one subject he did well in.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," he muttered.

Albus assumed that people would just ignore Lilian's wild theory about Professor Smith, but he was wrong. The Gryffindors in particular seemed to have taken an immediate disliking to him, and apparently his sixth-year class had been boycotted by angry students who wanted him fired.

The next time the first-years had him, no such thing happened.

"I'd like to thank you all for coming," Professor Smith said once the entire class was there. "It appears as though some misconceptions have been spreading based on what I have said in previous lessons, and people jumped to conclusions very quickly."

Lilian and Yvonne scowled at him, looking like they were about to pull their wands out.

"I'm going to let you all in on a secret, and I'm only going to tell you once, so make sure you're listening," Professor Smith said. "Come in closer."

Everybody leaned forward, momentarily intrigued by what Professor Smith was going to say.

Professor Smith lowered his voice, and whispered, "I am not a Death Eater."

He rolled up his sleeve, and showed his forearm to the class.

"You see my arm? I'm going to tell you a story about the Death Eaters."

Professor Smith sat up on his desk and leaned back, returning his sleeve to its normal place and lifting his voice back up to its normal booming level.

"Death Eaters had this thing called the Dark Mark. It was like a tattoo, only riddled with dark magic. Whenever Lord Voldemort summoned them, they would feel a burning sensation in their arm, where the tattoo was, and would quickly make their way to his side. It was their way of keeping together and staying loyal to him. Anybody who was a follower of Lord Voldemort would have one."

Everybody was still interested in what he had to say, it was as if they were spellbound by his voice.

"When I was at Hogwarts, as you could probably guess, there were some students who had the Dark Mark on their arms. Mostly they were children of Death Eaters. Some of them took it more seriously than others. I am ashamed to say that I was very friendly with a few of them. As they told stories about the things that 'Lord Voldemort' was asking them to do, I did nothing. I pretended to be a pure-blood who was raised in an orphanage, when I was really muggle-born. They could never tell. I was just as good a wizard as they were."

Albus was shocked. He didn't know it was possible for a muggle-born to be sorted into Slytherin. But apparently Professor Smith was a muggle-born.

"I was in my sixth year when Voldemort fell. That was the year that Harry Potter really went into action. He didn't go to school, even though he still had a year left, but he returned at the end of the year for the Battle of Hogwarts, the end of the war. He killed Voldemort. And since then I haven't had to hide anymore. I let people know that I am a muggle-born, because I don't have to live in fear of a Death Eater murdering me in my sleep."

Suddenly Albus felt sorry for Professor Smith. He hadn't known how hard his childhood had been. Yet somehow he was such a nice person.

"Now, enough about this serious business, it's time to get on with your education! Today we will be beginning an introduction to curses, which you will go through more thoroughly in your fourth year."

Professor Smith went into the basic theory behind curses, and Albus started to enjoy his lesson again. This had settled everything for Albus. He now knew for certain that Professor Smith wasn't a Death Eater. How could a muggle-born be a Death Eater? It looked like things were going to go back to normal. But he still had detention with Professor Abel for a few months. And everybody in Gryffindor hated him. But there was one less thing for him to worry about.


	7. Chapter 6: Halloween

Halloween started to approach at Hogwarts, and Albus could tell from the way that different parts of the castle started to be decorated for the holiday. But Halloween isn't all that the end of October brought to Hogwarts. It also brought closer the first Quidditch match of the year.

Albus had always known that Gryffindor and Slytherin didn't like each other very much. He'd been part of it himself in the way he despised Cameron Carrow and his group of blood-purists. But what he saw leading up to the Quidditch match was unbelievable. Duels were breaking out in the middle of the corridors between classes every day, and they were getting more and more violent. Students from all years found themselves in the hospital wing getting fixed up from all sorts of curses that had been fired at them. Albus couldn't believe that people were taking a single match so seriously when it hardly meant anything in the big picture.

"This match won't really change anything in the long run," Victoire explained to Albus one lunch time. "Sure, we might lose, Slytherin have a great Seeker, but unless their Chasers score heaps too, we just have to beat Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff to win overall. Slytherin are a really poor team right now, they're all fourth and fifth years."

"But isn't half of our team new, too?" Albus asked her.

"Yeah, but you don't have to worry about it. Our Chasers are all great, especially Dominique. People aren't expecting her to do well, but she's going to dominate the game. And then Fred Munson is awesome with his bat. His aim wasn't too good at the start of training, but with all the work he's putting in he could play for the Wimbourne Wasps!"

"Do Slytherin have any good players?" Albus asked, curious as to what he could expect at the game.

"Yeah, I guess so. Laura Moses, their Seeker and captain, is probably the best Seeker in Hogwarts at the moment. And their Beaters are great, too. You remember how good Henrietta Tuff was at the tryouts?"

Albus nodded.

"Well Nicole Jenkins is ten times as good. She aims for the head, and she never misses her target. She's going to go into professional Quidditch after school, for sure."

"If they're so good then won't they beat us?"

"Albus, you're not looking at the big picture! Sure, Laura Moses is good, but she might not see the snitch for ages. We might win even if she does catch the snitch! And regardless, it's only the first match of the year. We can do plenty of catching up if we have to."

Victoire's confident attitude seemed to be shared by almost everybody in Gryffindor. Strangely, Slytherin were also just as confident about winning, as Cameron Carrow was overly keen to tell Albus one Herbology lesson.

"I've heard that Jenkins is going to try to break your cousin's back early on," he said to Albus. "That way every time we go for a shot there won't be a Keeper to stop it, and we'll win by even more."

"You're assuming you'll win at all," Rose said, joining into the conversation. "You haven't seen our team. Jenkins has nothing on Tuff!"

"Oh, really? When was the last time someone got concussed because of a bludger that Tuff hit?" Cameron asked rhetorically.

"We're a good enough team that we don't have to cheat in order to get an advantage," Albus had said, trying to take the high ground.

To Albus's surprise, Neville came up to them.

"I do hope you're talking about something important," Neville said.

"We're talking about the Quidditch game," Albus said, figuring Neville wouldn't mind too much since they knew each other so well.

"Good, something important," Neville said as he joined in their argument.

Albus was surprised by how much all of the teachers cared about the Quidditch game. All of them were talking about it, wanting the result to help their team more than the others. Even teachers from Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw were excited, except for Professor Abel, as Albus found out one Transfiguration lesson.

"Ten points from Slytherin!" she said when the Slytherins started to get loud with their discussion about the Quidditch match. "I am very disappointed that you can't seem to focus whenever we're within a month of a Quidditch match. It's the same every year. If your essays continue to decline in quality, I will have to take very severe action. If I so much as hear a student say the word 'Quidditch', I will give them detention until the Christmas holidays."

And that was that. Never again did students mention Quidditch in Transfiguration.

October 31st came along. Being a Tuesday, he had Transfiguration first up. He worked through it, knowing that he only had to deal with another week of detentions with Professor Abel and he didn't want to add to it.

After Transfiguration was Charms. Professor Paget was teaching them a new charm that day, the Levitation Charm.

"Okay students, remember the wand movement: swish and flick. And remember to pronounce the spell correctly, lest you accidentally levitate your own head!"

Albus was practicing, but he couldn't get his feather to levitate.

" _Wingardium leviosa!_ " he yelled louder. The feather half-lifted, but then changed its mind and fell back down. "I give up!"

"Let me try!" Matt said. " _Winum leviosa!_ "

Something unexpected happened. Instead of the feather levitating, a strange red liquid started to come from the feather, flowing up to the ceiling.

"What have you done this time, Mr. Longbottom?" Professor Paget asked as she approached Albus and Matt. "What is this liquid?"

"I don't know, Professor. I said the spell and waved my wand, and this happened!" Matt defended himself.

Professor Paget examined the stream. It came from the feather and went directly upwards to the ceiling where it had started to pool. As more of the liquid emerged, the feather slowly started to disappear, bit by bit. She silently summoned a wine glass and then waved her wand at the stream, after which it went straight into the glass. She took a sip, and said "This is wine, Mr. Longbottom. I do hope you'll take care to say the spell _correctly_ next time."

Defense Against the Dark Arts was a good lesson. Albus didn't have any trouble with what they were learning there. The day finished up with Herbology, and Neville dismissed them all early as a treat, saying "Pradrulliscus is a boring plant, anyway, and you're unlikely to ever be examined on it, owing to the fact that the examiner would have fallen asleep by the end of the third examination."

The rest of the afternoon was spent in anticipation of the Halloween Feast. Albus and Matt could not wait, but Rose was the most excited as she anticipated how good the food would be.

At one point, Albus found himself ambushed by James and Fred, who wanted to talk to him in private, so they took him out of the common room.

"So Albus, did you have Charms today?" James asked as they walked through the portrait.

"Yes. Why?" Albus replied.

Fred started, "Well, to answer your question with another question, did you-"

"Learn any charms?" James finished.

"Yes, we learnt the Levitation Charm. Well Rose learnt it, anyway. Matt and I tried to learn it."

"Excellent. You got that Fred? The Levitation Charm,"

"Got it. This is going to be brilliant!"

"They'll talk about us for years to come!"

"What are you two up to?" Albus asked.

"You'll find out at the feast tonight," James answered.

"And trust us, you won't be disappointed," Fred said.

The two of them walked away, James patting him on the back as he went passed, and Albus just stood there. He watched them walk into the common room and figured there was nothing else he could do to find out what they were going to do, so he just followed them in and talked to Matt and Rose for a while longer.

Albus wasn't disappointed with the food at the feast. It was always good eating at Hogwarts, but the chefs had outdone themselves this time. He couldn't believe how good everything tasted. There was meat of every type, and all of it was cook to perfection. Albus had eaten more than he had at any other meal in his life, but when he had his full Rose was still going strong with about her fifth plate of lamb and mashed potatoes.

After a while, the empty plates which had once held mountains of meat disappeared, and they were replaced by plates covered in cake, ice cream, and millions of other types of dessert. Albus dug in, forgetting how full he had been, but it wasn't too long before he started paying for the amount of food he was eating.

He and Matt talked while Rose kept eating, and they discussed the Charms lesson. No matter what he was doing, Matt couldn't replicate what he'd done there.

"I think you mispronounced it during the lesson, mate," Albus told him.

"No! I didn't!" Matt said. "Look, it'll work this time! _Wingardium leviosa!_ "

Once Matt had performed the charm, the plate in front of him lifted from the table.

"See! I did it!" he said to Albus, excited.

Suddenly, the two of them heard a scream from the Ravenclaw table. They looked around and saw that suddenly everything was floating: the plates, the knives and forks, the food, the tables, the people, everything. It was all slowly making its way up.

"What did you do?" Albus asked Matt.

"I don't know! I must be more powerful than I thought!" Matt said, proud of what he'd achieved.

He looked around the room and saw that the other five tables were also floating. Everybody looked confused, and Albus realized that there was no way Matt had done this. He looked down to the ground, which was now alarmingly far away, and saw that James and Fred were both still down there with wands raised.

"Matt! It wasn't you!" Albus told him.

"No, it definitely was. I said the spell, and then everything started levitating. That's how charms work, Al," Matt explained.

"It wasn't. Just look at the ground. See? It's James and Fred."

The smile left Matt's face as he came to the realization that he wasn't responsible for what was happening. People started yelling and screaming all over the Great Hall.

The tables kept getting higher. Albus looked over to the staff table and saw that Headmaster Flitwick was holding onto the table for dear life as the charm had not affected him for some reason. He reached into his pocket for his wand, but dropped it onto the floor which was now a very long way down. James and Fred were laughing really hard, barely looking at what was happening, when suddenly someone yelled "We're about to hit the roof!"

Albus looked up, and they were indeed only a few feet away from the roof, though it was difficult to tell because it was charmed to look like the night sky.

James and Fred decided that the trick had gone on long enough, so they both aimed their wands at the five tables and together yelled " _Cadentia!_ "

Nothing happened. They tried again.

" _Cadentia!_ "

Again, nothing happened. The tables continued to approach the roof of the great hall, the seats threatening to crush everybody into them. Hagrid was close enough that he could almost touch it. As they got even closer, he started pushing against the roof to stop himself from going up even higher. Flitwick had climbed onto the table and was now running over to talk to Professor Smith.

James and Fred were frantically trying every spell they could think of that might work, but nothing they did was working. Albus was within reaching distance of the roof, and some of the taller students were leaning over because the roof was pushing their heads down. Finally, people heard Professor Smith yell out, " _Deskendi!_ "

The tables stopped rising, and slowly moved down to the ground. It took about a minute, but eventually they got their safely. When everything hit the ground, Albus could hear hundreds of people breathe a sigh of relief, before they started talking to each other about the experience.

Professor Flitwick got under the staff table and got onto the ground, moving his hand around until he found his wand. He then climbed onto the staff table and put his wand to his throat, before speaking to the Great Hall.

"Students, this is a unique experience, and I believe that a simple procedure is in order. It appears as though James Potter and Fred Weasley have fled the Great Hall, and as a result Professor Longbottom will have to inform them later tonight that they have lost Gryffindor fifty points and will be serving detention with Professor Smith for the next two months."

Everybody in the Great Hall cheered, before giving Professor Flitwick a standing ovation.

"After that adventure, I believe it is time for the feast to come to an end."

Everybody left the Great Hall and went to different parts of the castle again.

Albus, Rose and Matt went back to the Gryffindor common room where Rose did homework while Albus and Matt half-copied her. Their discussion was about what James and Fred had done for a while, but it very quickly turned to the Quidditch match that was being played on the weekend.

Albus went to the stadium early to get a good seat near the front of the stands. He sat with Rose and Matt, and they watched as the rest of the seats were slowly filled up. The houses all had their own stands in which to sit, and the teachers also had their own. Then there was a special booth for the commentator, Eireann Simon, a third-year Slytherin.

"Ladies and gentleman!" he yelled into the microphone. "Please welcome onto the pitch the Gryffindor Quidditch team!"

There was a massive amount of cheering from the Gryffindor part of the crowd as the seven players came onto the pitch.

"Please welcome Weasley! Rhodes! Davies! Tuff! Munson! Keys! And of course, the captain, Weasley!"

There was more cheering as they all moved to their side of the pitch and waited for the Slytherin team to come out.

"Boy, this is going to be a bit confusing, isn't it? Two Weasleys on the same team. It's going to be hard for you guys to tell which one I'm talking about. You'll just have to pay extra close attention. This team is mostly made up of new players, but Weasley has said she's confident of victory today, regardless. Now! Please welcome onto the pitch the Slytherin Quidditch team!"

There was a mix of cheers from the Slytherin students and boos from everybody else. It was obvious to everyone that Slytherin wasn't really liked by the rest of the school.

"Here comes Forney! Honeycut! Greengrass! Bonham! Jenkins! Marlowe! And, finally, first-time captain Laura Moses!"

There were more boos from Gryffindor, but this time they were drowned out by the cheers from Slytherin. They really liked how good of a player Moses was.

"Mister McLaggen is making his way to the middle of the pitch with the four balls. Weasley and Moses are shaking hands. And they're off! The ball is straight into the hands of Flower Greengrass, she's easily the pick of the Slytherin Chasers. Last year she scored more with the quaffle than any other player at the school. She passes it off to Merrill Bonham. It's his first game today, but he looks like he's got great potential. Bonham passes back to Greengrass, and what a shot from Tuff! She's nearly knocked Greengrass off of her broom! This really is going to be a battle between Tuff and Jenkins. They're the best Beaters at Hogwarts and they'll be firing today."

Albus was absorbed in the game already. He hadn't been able to watch any Quidditch games while he'd been at Hogwarts so far, so he was really enjoying this.

"Rhodes has the ball. It's his first game, but that's true for all three of Gryffindor's Chasers today. He passes to Barry Davies. Davies only really has one shot at this. He's graduating this year, but it's taken him until now to get into the team. Hopefully he can make the most of it. He passes to Weasley. But the ball has been intercepted! An amazing move from Jenkins there! She's hit the quaffle in mid-air with one of the bludgers! And it's gone straight to Greengrass! Magnificent work!"

Everyone in Gryffindor groaned. They had to admit that it was a very good move, and one that some professional Quidditch players struggled to pull off.

"Greengrass passes to Honeycut, but it's intercepted by Weasley! She's flying so fast straight down the middle! She dodges a bludger from Marlowe, and flies around Bonham! What is he doing! He should've blocked her there! Poor work from Bonham might cost Slytherin the first goal! Weasley approaches the goals, and she scores! Great shot! She feigned going to the left goal and then went to the center when Forney dived the wrong way! Gryffindor lead 10-0."

The eruption of cheers from Gryffindor was massive. They had started chanting, "Weasley! Weasley! Weasley!"

"Greengrass takes the ball back into play. She passes to Honeycut, who passes back to Greengrass. They're working like clockwork out there. Greengrass passes to Bonham, but Bonham fumbles it! He's dropped the quaffle! And Weasley has gathered! She flies towards the goal! She shoots! No, wait she hasn't! She's passed to Davies! And Davies scores! Genius move from Weasley. She's distracted Forney and then passed to Davies who had a clear shot at the goals! Gryffindor lead 20-0."

Gryffindor had suddenly taken the game by storm. Merrill Bonham made more mistakes throughout the game, almost always conceding a goal because of it. Gryffindor were up 70-0 before Slytherin even had a shot at the goals.

"Bonham gets the quaffle back. Hopefully he doesn't mess it up this time. He passes to Honeycut, who gets passed a brilliantly hit bludger coming from Tuff. Honeycut is lucky to escape unscathed there. She passes to Greengrass, who passes back to Honeycut. She's in range to score now! She shoots! And Weasley has blocked it! What a dive from the Gryffindor captain!"

Albus was amazed by the way that Eireann was able to stay basically unbiased. Aside from occasionally pointing out that Jenkins had hit more targets than Tuff, he didn't make any comments that clearly favored Slytherin. The tone of the game started to change towards the end.

"And after that goal from Weasley, Gryffindor lead 120-0. They are leaving Slytherin for dead. Only Moses catching the snitch will save them now. Speaking of which, Moses has gone into a fast dive! And Keys is following! Moses has the lead, but I can't see where the snitch is. She's focused, though, so it must be there. She's reaching out! Has she got it? She's pulling up from her dive, she doesn't have the snitch. It must've been a feint. Keys has crashed into the ground, not really able to do anything. And what's going on with Jenkins and Weasley? Jenkins has hit Weasley with her bat!"

Sure enough, Nicole Jenkins had flown up to Dominique and hit her in the stomach with her bat. She had doubled over in pain, and was slowly making her way towards the ground.

"Well, the game continues, and thanks to the distraction, Slytherin have their first goal. The score's now 120-10, but Gryffindor still have a massive lead. Weasley looks like she may be out for the game; she's making her way to the change rooms. And Gryffindor will get a penalty shot for that, you'd think."

Albus got out of his seat straight away, not bothering to watch as Davies easily scored from his penalty shot, and made his way out of the stands. He climbed down the stairs, and was soon followed by Rose and Matt. He ran, though, and lost them behind him as they weren't fast enough to keep up. He didn't pay attention to the game, but as he entered the Gryffindor change rooms he heard a loud cheer, indicating that someone had scored.

"Dominique! Are you okay?" Albus asked as he ran towards her. She was being looked at by the school nurse, Madam Pomfrey.

"Hey, Al," she said, looking up and smiling at him, though he could see she was in pain. "Yeah, I'm fine, I think. Maybe a broken rib, but I'm fine other than that."

"Well that's certainly true," Madam Pomfrey said. "You have a broken rib. I'll have to take you to the hospital wing. There's no broken flesh, so it will be hard to heal. You'll have to stay overnight."

"Don't worry, Al," Dominique said to Albus. "I'll be fine. Madam Pomfrey's really good at healing broken bones."

Albus wasn't convinced. He went up to her and hugged her, and she hugged him back, but winced in pain.

"Step back, Mr. Potter!" Madam Pomfrey yelled at him. "You're putting too much pressure on her rib cage. She's very fragile at the moment."

"I'll see you later, Al," Dominique said as she stood up and made her way to the hospital wing with Madam Pomfrey. As they were leaving, Rose and Matt entered the room, panting.

"How is she, Al?" Rose asked him.

"She's going to be alright. She's got a broken rib cage is all," Albus told them.

"That's a relief," Matt said, still trying to catch his breath. "How the heck did you run so fast, Al?"

"I'm used to it," he said.

The three of them went out of the change rooms, but saw that everybody was leaving the stands. The game had finished, and they'd missed the end. They looked through the moving crowd until they spotted someone they knew. Rose spotted Howard, and she began making her way through the crowd to him. Albus and Matt followed close behind so as not to get lost, and they soon got to Howard.

"Hey guys!" Howard said excitedly. "What's up? Are you mad at me about something? You're mad at me aren't you? What did I do this time?"

Albus was amused by the way that Howard went from cheery to glum so quickly.

"Don't worry, Howard, we just want to know what happened. We missed the end because we went to see Dominique," Rose explained.

Howard breathed a sigh of relief, and looked like he was wiping sweat from his forehead.

"It was a tie," he said.

"What?" the three others yelled simultaneously.

"Yeah, it was a tie. The Slytherin Seeker, I forget her name, she caught the snitch when we were up by one hundred and fifty points. It was a tie one hundred and seventy to one hundred and seventy."

Rose, Albus and Matt were all in shock at hearing this, and for the first time they looked at the people around them. They were all in shock, too. Nobody had expected that result.

They silently made their way to the Gryffindor common room. Well, three of them did. Howard followed them and didn't close his mouth the entire way there. Albus didn't really pay attention to what he was saying, but he was sure it was boring and not really important.

Albus could barely sleep that night. He could just think how the result would affect the rest of the year for Gryffindor.

The next day, Albus woke up nice and early. He went to breakfast, and was done by the time that Rose and Matt turned up. When the mail came, Rose got a letter from her mother, saying that her father was going to spend some time in Romania on special Auror business. Rose was a bit used to this, because her dad so often went on assignments overseas, so she wasn't very surprised by it.

Since it was a Sunday, Albus didn't really do much. He played wizard's chess against Rose and Matt for a while, and they did some homework in the Room of Requirement for the peace and quiet. By the afternoon, he was bored, and he ended up just walking around the castle by himself.

He was on the fourth floor, looking at a strange painting of a unicorn and a horse fighting, when he got a tap on his shoulder. He turned around to see James and Fred looking at him, grinning.

"Hey, Al," James said. "We'd like to thank you for the great work that you did helping us with our prank on Halloween."

"What? But I didn't do anything!" Albus said.

"Yes, you did," Fred replied. "You chose the spell that we'd use to prank everyone!"

The wheels turned in Albus's head, and it hit him. That's why they'd asked him what he learnt in Charms that day!

"So you used the Levitation Charm?" Albus asked them.

"Sort of," James said, thinking hard about what he was going to say. "We kind of-"

"Modified it!" Fred interrupted. "We modified it to work on a much bigger scale."

"We're already very smart wizards," James said, his chest sticking out.

"And handsome, too," Fred added.

"Is that the reason you're here? To thank me? Don't you have detention for the next two months?" Albus asked them.

"Yes, but it's with Professor Smith!" James said. "He's great!"

"All we do is sit in his office and he talks to us about random stuff," Fred added in. "We can trust him with anything, and he doesn't tell anyone!"

"Speaking of things we can't tell everyone," James said.

Fred looked at him confused, but James nudged his head towards Albus.

"Oh, of course! Al, we are here to present you with the Marauder's Map!"

Fred pulled a piece of folded up parchment out of his pocket and handed it to Albus. Albus looked at it and unfolded it, but it was completely blank.

"What is this?" he asked, assuming it was some sort of joke from the two of them.

"You have to open it first," James said.

"I have," Albus replied. "I have opened it. I've looked it over quite thoroughly and I am very amazed by it," he said with a hint of sarcasm. "It's blank!"

"Yes, it's blank now," Fred said, "But that's just so other people can't see it. You have to put your wand on it and say 'I solemnly swear that I am up to no good'."

"Seriously? You expect me to do that?" Albus asked them.

"Yes, we do, Al." James said. "And it's important that you do."

Albus stared at them for a second, before saying "Fine, I'll do it."

He put his wand on the parchment and said, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

Suddenly, lines of ink started to appear on the parchment, and they formed words, saying 'Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs, Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers are proud to present the Marauder's Map'.

Albus opened up the parchment again, and this time it was covered with a map of Hogwarts. Albus could see the whole castle on it. And not only that, but he could see little footsteps come and go, as if they were actually walking around the castle, and each set of footsteps was accompanied by a small name next to it indicating who it belonged to. The map had all of the secret passages and every room.

"Where did you get this?" Albus asked them.

"Nicked it from dad's office a few years back," James explained. "Only figured out what it was or how to use it last year at school, and that's how we've been so successful."

"With this map," Fred explained "You'll never have to worry about getting caught by teachers doing anything. You can always check before to see if someone's coming!"

"That's amazing!" Albus said. But then he thought about it for a second. "Why are you giving it to me?" he asked them.

"That's a secret, Al," Fred said. "Let's just say that…"

"We don't need it anymore," James answered. "We have other ways to do things now."

"Oh, and don't tell anyone about it! Especially not Rose! She'd just ask you to give it to a teacher," Fred said. "If you tell a soul about it, you'll be in big trouble."

"And once you're done, remember to put your wand on the parchment," James said, demonstrating with his own wand. "And say 'Mischief Managed'. Otherwise anyone can see it."

"Well, we have to go, Al," Fred said to Albus, starting to walk off.

"Enjoy yourself, and see you later," James said smiling, before walking off with Fred.


	8. Chapter 7: Merlin

**A/N: I've recently been experiencing trouble with my internet, so the next few updates may be a bit less on schedule. Anyways, here's Chapter 7.**

Albus sat in the Transfiguration classroom, writing an essay about the impact that Merlin had on Transfiguration in complete silence. It was his last detention with Professor Abel, as he had now served the original month for plagiarism and the extra two weeks for falling asleep in class. No longer would he have to sit there every night and write out random essays. Instead, he'd be able to sit in their common room enjoying himself with Rose and Matt and finishing his homework the night before it was due, rather than the morning that it was due.

He looked up at the clock. He still had another five minutes to go. He looked out the window and saw that Matt was waiting outside for him. There wasn't long to go. He looked back down at his parchment and breathed a great sigh. He knew that it was completely horrible, and he'd had to make up almost the whole thing. All he knew about Merlin was that he was some famous wizard that lived a few centuries ago and really liked muggles. Other than that, he'd had to make up everything. He knew it was probably all wrong, but it was still the best he could do.

He looked up at the clock. Four minutes to go. Albus looked back down, and decided his essay should have some smart-sounding conclusion. He added ' _In conclusion, Merlin truly was the Prince of Enchanters, as he not only invented a sport out of transfiguring trees into catapults, but was also the first wizard to transfigure a rock into a shoe._ '

He looked up at the clock. Three minutes to go. He really wished it would go a bit more quickly. It had been like this every day, two hours flying by, and then five minutes that took an eternity before he could go. This was the longest five minutes: the last five minutes. Then he was free.

He looked up at the clock. Two minutes to go. He looked back down at his essay. He looked at the top, and saw the title, but realized that he had forgotten to put his name on it. He rushed to scribble his name on the top, making sure that his essay wouldn't just be discarded as it had been once before. The next night he'd had to spend four hours there, two of them rewriting his previous essay.

He looked up at the clock. One minute to go. He looked out the window again. He couldn't quite tell, but he thought that Matt looked like he was tapping his foot. He was certainly looking around quite nervously. Albus wondered why, but then realized soon he would be able to find out.

He looked up at the clock. Thirty seconds to go. Wait a minute. Was that really only thirty seconds? He could've sworn it had been longer than that.

He looked up at the clock. Twenty seconds to go. The clock ticked so slowly now, agonizingly so.

He stared at the clock as he watched it tick over the final seconds. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

Professor Abel stood up and said "Students. Put your quills down. I will collect your essays now. After, and only after, I have collected all of them, you may leave. Please do so silently. Once you leave, return to your Common Rooms immediately as it is past your curfew."

Albus waited in anticipation as she collected them all, and as soon as she had, he stood up with everyone else and practically ran for the door.

Once he got outside, he joined Matt and the two of them started walking the halls. Albus remembered the Marauder's Map, and how cool it would be to be able to explore somewhere that they haven't seen yet, but he remembered that James and Fred had told him not to show anyone.

' _Surely they didn't mean everyone_ ' he thought to himself. ' _They said not to show it to Rose, but Matt isn't Rose, and he won't tell a teacher. Besides, if I never tell Matt about it, it's not like I'll ever be able to use it. We go almost everywhere together._ '

After a big of thinking, Albus convinced himself that it was a good idea to tell Matt about the Map. So he pulled Matt aside into an empty classroom and pulled it out.

"I have to show you something, Matt," he said.

"What is it?" Matt asked.

"It's a map."

Albus showed him the blank parchment, and Matt stared at it.

"It's a blank piece of paper, Al."

Albus tapped his wand on it, and said "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

Suddenly, the same as before, lines started to appear on the map. Albus unfolded it and revealed a map of the whole castle to Matt, whose jaw dropped.

"Wow, so this is a map of Hogwarts?" he asked.

"Yes, and it also shows where everybody is. All of the teachers and the students," Albus said.

"Look, here's the Gryffindor common room," he said, pointing to one of the top corners. "There's loads of people in there. Here's the library. Rose is there studying, see?"

Matt was looking at the map in amazement. Albus was still pretty impressed by it, too.

"And that's us, is it?" Matt asked, pointing to the second floor on the map, just outside the Transfiguration classroom.

"Yes, it is."

"We're alone, aren't we?" Matt asked.

"Yes we are."

"Then why does it say that Merrill Bonham is walking towards us?" Matt asked.

The two of them looked at each other. Matt turned around and yelped. Albus quickly muttered "Mischief managed!" and folded up the map. Matt was just standing there, staring at Merrill Bonham and his two thugs approaching.

"Matt!" Albus said. "Run!"

He had to drag him to get him to start running, but soon the two of them were running at full pelt, trying to dodge hexes that Bonham was flinging at them. They were doing alright to dodge them as well as they were. They ran up the stairs, lucky that the staircase they were on started moving just before the Slytherins could get on the bottom of it.

They climbed all the way up to the top of the castle, with the three Slytherins in hot pursuit. Albus didn't know why they were being chased, but he didn't care. He didn't want to spend the next week in the hospital wing.

They got up to the Seventh floor, but they were starting to run out of breath. Albus stopped to catch his breath and turned around to see if they'd lost the Slytherins. They were only a few steps down, and he had to duck to avoid some bright blue spell aimed for his head.

He kept running, trying to catch up with Matt, and he noticed that Matt wasn't running for the Gryffindor common room, but in the complete opposite direction. He was running to the Room of Requirement.

Albus followed him, the Slytherins bearing down on him, firing spell after spell at him. He saw Matt stop, and a doorway appeared on the wall. Matt rushed in through the doorway, and Albus ran to catch him, but he saw the door slowly closing. He knew he wouldn't be able to get in if it closed, so he yelled "Matt! Hold the door open!"

Matt peeked his head outside of the room and saw how close behind Albus the Slytherins were. He tried to push against the door to stop it from closing, but his efforts were almost useless.

Albus got to the door and dived inside just in time, because Matt's strength gave way and the door slammed shut, almost catching on Albus' foot.

"That was a close one," Albus said to Matt.

He could hear someone trying to open the door, and he saw the handle turn, but it was locked and didn't let them in. Soon, he hear banging on the door. "You're in for it now, Potter! Open up!"

He could hear that the three Slytherins were banging on the door, trying to get it open, yelling at them to open it up.

After a while, one of them said, "Step back! I've got this."

After a moment of silence, Albus heard someone scream " _Alohomora!_ "

Nothing happened.

"What are you doing, Holmes?" Bonham said.

"It was meant to unlock the door," Holmes replied.

"Well then try to open it!" Bonham screamed at him.

Holmes walked up to the door and turned the handle, but it was still locked. "They must've locked it again," he said. " _Alohomora!_ "

He tried to open the door, but again it wouldn't budge.

"It's not working!" he said, and the three of them went back to banging on the door.

After a few minutes, they grew tired of this, and Bonham said "We'll just have to wait until they come out. We'll stay here all night if we have to!"

Albus and Matt couldn't hear anything, so they put their ears up to the door and listened to what was happening. All they heard was quiet muttering and then a snicker, followed by footsteps.

"Are they gone?" Matt whispered.

"I don't know, I wish we could see outside," Albus said back.

"Look at the map!" Matt yelled at him.

"Oh yeah!" Albus said, while Matt just shook his head. Albus said "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," and the map revealed itself again. He looked up to where the Room of Requirement was, and realized that he couldn't find it.

"Where is it?" he asked out loud.

"Where's what?" Matt replied, moving over to Albus to look at the map.

"The Room of Requirement isn't on the map!" Albus exclaimed as he kept looking over the Seventh Floor. He couldn't find it anywhere!

"Maybe that was by design. So that people couldn't see who was in here," Matt suggested.

"I guess so," Albus said. After a minute, he located where the room should have been, and he saw footsteps walking away from it. "There, they've left. They're about to go down the stairs."

"Thank goodness, so we can leave?" Matt said as he opened the door. Now it didn't take much effort at all to keep the door open.

"Yes, let's go back to the Common Room quickly so that none of the teachers see us. It's past our curfew," Albus said. They decided to sneak back to the Common Room.

They rounded a corner and Albus saw Professor Smith. He stopped Matt, indicated over to Professor Smith, and mouthed 'Let's go back'. They quietly turned around and tried to walk back around the corner, but they had been spotted.

"Albus! Matt!" Professor Smith said cheerily as he approached them. However, he went from smiling to frowning as he looked at his watch. "It's past your curfew, isn't it?" he asked them.

They both nodded guiltily, not wanting to lie to a teacher.

"Then shouldn't you be in your common room?" Professor Smith asked them.

"We were going right there!" Matt said.

"I understand, Mr. Longbottom," Professor Smith had gone to using his surname to address him, which wasn't a good sign. "But unfortunately the rules are the rules. You two should both join me for detention tomorrow night."

"But I've just finished having my detentions with Professor Abel!" Albus complained.

"There's nothing I can do, Mr. Potter. It's just the rules," Professor Smith explained.

"But you're a teacher!" Matt said. "What if you just pretended you hadn't seen us?"

"Are you asking me to lie?" Professor Smith asked, laughing. "You are quite funny, Mr. Longbottom. The two of you will come to my office on Monday night, I won't make you come in for detention on a weekend. Make your way to your common room, now, you have to be at your wits to watch the Quidditch match tomorrow! Good night."

The Quidditch match that Professor Smith was referring to was the match between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, the second match of the year. After the tie between Slytherin and Gryffindor, the winner of this match would be leading the competition with the first win of the year. And people certainly didn't expect another tie, especially since Ravenclaw were such a good team and the reigning champions.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" Albus could hear Eireann Simon saying, "Welcome to the second Quidditch match for the school year between Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw!"

There was a lot of cheering, but the atmosphere wasn't as good as it had been at the match between Gryffindor and Slytherin, Albus thought. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw had a massive rivalry, too, but since Slytherin weren't playing, there was no common enemy, and Gryffindor and Slytherin both just wanted a close game so that it wouldn't be too hard to come back from a tie in the first match.

"Please welcome onto the pitch the reigning champions! Ravenclaw! Josephson! Saunders! Hedley! Dennel! Carlyle! Ollivander! And Ravenclaw's captain, in her last year, Beater Porsche Hanley!"

There was a lot of cheering coming from the Ravenclaw section of the crowd. They were very excited, expecting to win back to back Cups.

"Now welcome their opponents, Hufflepuff! Parent! Mondy! Drake! Simpson! Winter! Sinclair! And captain Holly Hayley!"

Hufflepuff's captain was also a Beater. Albus couldn't help but notice how young half of Hufflepuff's team was. It looked like there were only two Seventh Years, and one of their Chasers looked like he was young enough to be a first-year, but Albus knew he wasn't because otherwise he'd be in classes with him.

"And we're off!" Albus was surprised by how quickly the match had started, and before he knew it, Ravenclaw had scored their first goal.

"Magnificent shot from Hedley there! She easily gets it passed Hiram Parent, who has conceded a goal just twenty seconds into the match! One of the fastest scores Hogwarts has ever seen!"

Things didn't start well for Hufflepuff, and things didn't continue well for Hufflepuff either. In just minutes, Ravenclaw had a fifty point lead. Then a hundred point lead. Then a hundred and fifty point lead!

"And Saunders puts through her tenth goal to give Ravenclaw a hundred and sixty to zero lead! You almost want Sinclair to catch the snitch now so that the agony will be over for Hufflepuff!"

Albus kept watching as Hufflepuff finally scored their first goal, a feat that was only managed because Ravenclaw's Keeper Hugh Josephson had flown into a goal post and almost fallen off of his broom.

"And someone's seen the snitch!"

Albus looked up to the Seekers and saw that they were both climbing very quickly.

"It looks like Ollivander is in front, but Sinclair is catching quickly! It's experience against speed here! Sinclair's caught him, his lighter figure giving him an edge when it comes to speed, and they're both reaching for the snitch!"

Albus was watching intently, on his feet, along with most of the crowd. If Sinclair caught it, it would level the scores and mean that every team had tied their first games, essentially the year would start from scratch again.

"It's neck and neck! But a well-placed bludger from Hanley has hit Sinclair! Sinclair's fallen into Ollivander, and they're both falling from the sky!"

Everybody watching gasped as the two had both come off of their brooms and were plummeting towards the ground very quickly, their brooms falling with them.

"They both grab onto someone's broom, I'm not sure who it belongs too, but they're not happy about it. Ollivander has mounted it and is slowing them down, and Sinclair has jumped off!"

Everyone held their breath as they saw Liam Sinclair flying through the sky. It was so quiet that you could've heard a pin drop. Or rather a broom falling.

"And Sinclair has caught his broom! An amazing jump there, and he doesn't fall to his death!"

Everyone in the school breathed a great big sigh of relief, and the other players stopped watching the Seekers and returned to their business. After that inspirational jump from Sinclair, Hufflepuff started to come back, but they were already getting smashed, so it made little difference. What it did do was put them within range that if they were to catch the snitch, they would win.

"And that goal from Drake puts Hufflepuff up to 60 points, only trailing by 120 points now. This would be the ideal time for Sinclair to catch the snitch before it gets blown out beyond 150 again. Speaking of the snitch, there it is!"

Everybody's attention went back to the two Seekers, who were again neck and neck in their pursuit of the snitch. This time Sinclair had the lead, and he was clearly faster than Ollivander.

"Sinclair looks like he's going to get it! He's reaching out for it, he's grabbed at it! But it's jumped up above him! He's missed it! He can't turn around quickly enough and Ollivander has caught it! Ravenclaw win!"

Ravenclaw erupted into cheers and Hufflepuff all groaned. This looked like it was going to be Ravenclaw's year again.

"And with that Ravenclaw have won by two hundred and seventy points! Their form is similar to last year, so if they keep it up they're almost guaranteed to win the Cup! Gryffindor or Slytherin would have to go undefeated for the rest of the year to stop them now!"

The match was all anybody could talk about. For some people, the way that Ravenclaw dominated most of the game made them decide it wasn't a very interesting game after all, but other people thought that Liam Sinclair's incredible jump from one broom to another was the best thing they'd ever seen someone do in a game of Quidditch, and some were starting to hate Timmy Ollivander for not letting him on the broom.

The other thing that people were really talking about was how unfair Timmy had been when he caught the snitch, just waiting behind Liam for it to dodge him. They thought that it wasn't very unsportsmanlike.

Albus just thought that the match had been incredible to watch, and was amazed that Hufflepuff had been so close to winning but still lost by two hundred and seventy points. It would be really hard for Gryffindor to win the Quidditch Cup now, as they would have to win both of their last two games.

Albus went to bed late that night, and couldn't sleep at all. Instead of trying to sleep, he decided to get out the Marauder's Map and look at what was happening around the castle.

The castle looked very quiet, all he saw was a few prefects patrolling here and there, with some teachers out doing things. In the Astronomy tower, there were a few seventh-years doing some assignment, Albus figured. Albus decided to do some virtual exploring, trying to find the Slytherin common room, as he had no idea where it was. He started by looking in the Dungeons, and he saw that there was a collection of rooms with heaps of Slytherins, none of them moving. He figured that's where it was, and there was one mystery solved. He looked around and saw that there was no one else in the dungeons except for one person pacing around. He checked the name, and he almost fell out of his bed when he saw it. It said 'Merlin'.

He blinked a few times and looked at it again. It still said 'Merlin' was in the dungeons. He didn't believed it, and figured that it was some sort of mistake or something. He didn't know how the map worked, so maybe it was possible that it made mistakes. When the name suddenly disappeared, he figured it must be a mistake, because no one can disappear either, named Merlin or not.

He was about to fold up the map and go to sleep when he saw more movement in the dungeons. Someone else was moving down there. He looked closely and saw that it was Prissy Greengrass. He didn't know much about Prissy, but he knew that she shouldn't be up at this time of night, and wherever she was going, she'd almost definitely be caught any one of the number of teachers and prefects patrolling the castle.

Albus saw Prissy walking up the stairs out of the dungeons, and saw that she was only a short distance away from Professor Slughorn, who was on his way back to the dungeons. However, she walked in a direction that basically lead to a dead end. Albus was confused, but then he saw that there was a secret passage, which she went through. Next thing he knew, she was on the Fourth Floor all of a sudden, and had completely avoided everyone.

She kept walking, ducking into secret passages and somehow avoiding teachers and prefects. She had a close call when she was just around the corner from Ravenclaw prefect Caitlyn Draper, but Prissy somehow knew what was ahead without seeing it and ducked into another secret passage.

Albus saw that she was steadily going higher up the castle, and eventually she had made her way to the seventh floor, the same floor that the Gryffindor common room was on. She walked around a bit, taking a very long route to avoid Professor Abel and Neville, but eventually she made her way to the Room of Requirement, where she walked into the wall and disappeared off of the Marauder's Map.

Albus was a bit annoyed that he couldn't see what she was doing anymore, so he decided to get up and go to the Room of Requirement. He got out of his bed, and walked towards the door to the common room.

"Where are you going?" he heard quiet a voice behind him ask. He turned around and saw that it was Vincent, who was just sitting on his bed looking out his window.

"What are you doing awake?" Albus asked him, trying to distract him from the question.

"Couldn't sleep, you?"

"Same," Albus said. There was a moment of awkward silence, when Vincent again spoke.

"Where are you going?" he asked again, turning to look at Albus now.

Albus thought for a moment before thinking of an excuse, "Uh, I have to go to the bathroom," he said.

"That's the other way," Vincent pointed out.

Albus nodded, but kept standing there.

"I know you don't have to go," Vincent said. "That's what everybody says when they leave, but they never go to the bathroom."

"I just forgot something in the common room," Albus said, deciding that was a much better excuse. "I forgot that I'd left it there, and I just remembered, so I figured I should go now before I forget again."

"Sure," Vincent said, turning back to look out the window again.

Albus stood for a moment. He was about to turn and go to the Room of Requirement when he suddenly found himself asking "Why can't you sleep?"

He didn't expect Vincent to reply, and mentally slapped himself for asking something so stupidly, but Vincent did answer his question.

"I miss home," he said.

"Well, you'll get to see it again, soon," Albus said, hoping that would cheer Vincent up a bit. "Christmas break is coming up."

"But then I'll get sent back here almost straight away," Vincent said. "I wish I wasn't a wizard, then I wouldn't have to come here."

"Seriously?" Albus asked. "You're still on about that?"

Vincent looked at Albus, then looked back out the window. "You wouldn't understand," he said.

Albus stared at him for a minute longer, but decided that the conversation was over and went out to look for Prissy. He walked through the empty common room and climbed out the portrait hole. He turned around and saw that the Fat Lady was asleep. He wondered if he would be able to wake her up when he needed to go back in.

He went to the Room of Requirement, but the door wasn't there. He opened the Marauder's Map and looked at it, he couldn't find her on the Map, so he assumed she was still in there. He looked down and noticed that Professor Abel was dangerously close, so he closed the Map, saying "Mischief managed" as he did so, and started to quickly walk back to the common room.

"Potter!" he heard someone behind him yell. He turned around and saw that it was Professor Abel. He'd been caught out of the common room.

"H-h-hello," he said to her.

"What are you doing outside of your common room after curfew?"

Albus contemplated telling her that Prissy was also up, but he had no way of proving it as he hadn't actually seen her and he couldn't get into the Room of Requirement. He just stood there not answering.

"I'm afraid that you will have to attend detention with me again. And such a pity, you only just finished didn't you?" Professor Abel said with a smile starting to show itself on the edges of her lips. Did she enjoy this?

Albus was about to says something back when someone else yelled at them "Eulalia!". Albus looked and saw that it was Neville, running towards them, with Professor Smith right behind him. He breathed a sigh of relief.

"Eulalia! Why are you up here?" Neville asked her as he approached them. "The Hufflepuff common room is seven floors down, were you just going for a leisurely stroll?

"I was patrolling to corridors. And it's a good thing I was, because Mr. Potter here was caught red-handed outside of his common room," Professor Abel said to him, the smile still showing itself slightly. "He is to serve detention with me for-"

"Don't be so fast to dish out punishments, Eulalia," Professor Smith interrupted her. "I've already caught him out of his common room tonight, as I was just telling Neville here. He is serving detention with me. Isn't that right, Albus?"

Albus nodded, even though it had been the previous night that Professor Smith had caught him out after curfew.

The smile left Professor Abel's face, and she stared at Albus for a moment. "Are you sure that's an adequate punishment? I'm sure it would be well in order to remove house points for taking so long to return to his common room."

"I don't think that will be necessary, Eulalia," Neville said. "As you can see, he's right outside the Gryffindor room, and the Fat Lady is asleep, so maybe he couldn't wake her up and was waiting for a teacher to help him."

Neville started knocking on the portrait, and the Fat Lady woke up at once.

"Password?" she said.

"Babbity", Neville said to the painting. She swung back and revealed the hole to the common room. Albus looked at Neville, who pointed inside, and Albus walked in. The portrait swung closed behind him, and he could hear that the three teachers were still discussing something. He got really lucky there. He went straight back to his room and had a dreamless sleep that night.

On that Monday night, Albus and Matt went to their detention with Professor Smith. Rose had been angry at them for getting into trouble, and had become infuriated when she found out that Albus had done it again the next night, sneaking around. He told Matt about what he saw with Merlin and Prissy, but he didn't think anything of it.

"It was probably a glitch, mate," Matt had told him. "First you see Merlin appear and disappear, then you see Prissy moving around the castle really quickly. I think it's messing up. It's probably really old, you know. Maybe it's been around since the Founders! Maybe that's who the Marauders are!"

He didn't tell James and Fred what he'd seen, figuring that Matt was probably right. He did tell them about their detention, however.

"Detention with Professor Smith!" James had exclaimed.

"You're in for a treat, Al," Fred had added.

When Albus and Matt got to his office that night, they knocked on his door, but he didn't reply.

"If he isn't here then does that mean we don't have to do the detention?" Matt asked, laughing.

"We should probably wait," Albus said. But on the inside he really wanted to go. He was almost certain that James and Fred were lying about how laid-back Professor Smith's detentions were.

After a couple of minutes, Matt knocked on the door again, but there was still no reply. "I don't think he's in there."

Albus and Matt both stood on their toes to look through a window into his office. There were no lights on in it, so it was very dark and they couldn't see inside.

While they were looking in, Professor Smith came up behind them sneakily and clapped between their ears very loudly, resulting in both of them screaming and Professor Smith laughing so hard he was almost in tears.

As he calmed down a bit, he said "Alright, you two follow me. We're going somewhere secret tonight."

Professor Smith started walking off, and Albus and Matt followed confused.

"Where are we going?" Albus asked after a while.

"I told you, it's somewhere secret," Professor Smith said smiling at them.

"But if you're taking us there, won't we remember where it is? So it won't exactly be secret anymore," Matt said.

"Ah, that's the clever part, though, it could move again. It took me all weekend to find it," Professor Smith said cryptically.

"What do you mean, it moved?" Albus asked, very confused.

"Hogwarts is a magical castle," Professor Smith said. "The rooms tend to move around a bit. Some places disappear altogether and turn up again weeks, months or even years later in a completely different part of the castle."

"So what place are we going?" Matt asked. "And what are we doing? This doesn't seem much like a detention."

"You'll find out when we get there," Professor Smith said.

They kept following him, and he led them up the stairs to the Fifth Floor. He took them to a corridor that Al didn't know existed, and at the end there was a small doorway which lead into a small room, barely big enough to fit the three of them in. Professor Smith crawled in, and beckoned the other two in.

"Come on, get in!" he exclaimed. They looked at each other, and Al reluctantly crawled into the small room. Matt followed him in, and then Professor Smith closed the door behind them.

They were very cramped for space, and Professor Smith started to try to climb over and through Albus and Matt, hitting Matt's face with his leg and elbowing Albus in the nose. They were lots of exclamations of pain coming from the three of them as Professor Smith eventually made his way back to the door that they'd come in from.

"Why did we come in here?" Albus asked, before Matt kicked his elbow and he screamed in pain.

"It's a secret passage!" Professor Smith told them.

"But there's only a way in, not a way out," Matt said angrily as Professor Smith kneed him in the back.

"Is there?" Professor Smith asked as he opened the door again, and he crawled out.

Albus and Matt looked at each other. There was a bit more room in there without Professor Smith with them, and they saw that there was definitely only one door, the one they'd come in through. They climbed out of it, but they were now definitely in a different part of the castle. It was a great hall that they'd never seen before, and it had table after table in it. Professor Smith was walking to the other end of the hall, but Albus and Matt were distracted by the two long walls of the corridor. There were four massive tapestries, each one with a different person on them.

One tapestry had a massive wizard in golden and red armour. He had a sword with rubies in its handle and a mane of red hair along with a full beard. The tapestry next of it was of a quite fat redhead witch. She was smiling broadly from ear to ear and seemed to radiate joy. On the other wall was another witch, this one very thin with black hair. She was wearing a tiara and dark blue robes. The fourth tapestry terrified Albus, though. It had a very old wizard. He was completely bald and had a long beard. His robes were completely black and he wore around his neck a necklace with a locket attached to it. The most terrifying part of him was his eyes. Their piercing stare made it feel like he was looking directly into Albus' soul.

"Who are these guys?" Matt asked. The tapestries, while they were moving around and looking at them, seemed incapable of speech.

"The founders of Hogwarts!" Professor Smith yelled at them from ahead, where he was going through another doorway. "Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin!"

Albus looked back at the wizard that he assumed to be Godric Gryffindor. He recognized the sword as the Sword of Gryffindor, and thought about how much of a sight it would have been to have seen him in person.

Albus and Matt followed Professor Smith through the doorway.

"I found this place when I was at Hogwarts," Professor Smith explained as he opened a cupboard. "I doubt many other people know about it, and it seems to disappear and reappear almost at random at different parts of the castle. I always have to keep an eye out for anything unusual, though, because the way in is different every time is appears."

He pulled out two bottles of some strange liquid and two glasses. He poured the liquid into each of the two cups and put them down on a table.

"Butterbeer?" he asked them.

Albus sat down at the table and looked suspiciously into the cup, Matt following suit.

"Seriously, guys, it's just butterbeer. It tastes great, if you haven't had it before," Professor Smith said again. "Just because this is a detention, doesn't mean you can't enjoy yourselves."

Professor Smith then grabbed a large box and opened it. He took a goblet out of it, pouring some of the butterbeer into the goblet and drinking from it.

"This is my favourite cup. When I drink from it, I feel like I could live forever. It's even better than butterbeer normally feels," Professor Smith said.

Albus figured he might as well try the butterbeer. He sipped at the cup in front of him. It tasted cold, but it made its way down through his throat, he felt a warm feeling fill him from the inside.

"Wow, that's great!" Albus said as he took a huge gulp of it. Matt realized that it was okay to drink, and he was soon drinking it in large quantities, too.

"Slow down guys," Professor Smith said as he stopped drinking. "There's only two bottles, and we're already halfway through the first one."

After that, Albus and Matt thoroughly enjoyed the detention. They were in some mysterious part of the castle that neither of them had seen before drinking the best drink they'd ever had.

Professor Smith started talking to them, and they went into a deep discussion about the current state of the Quidditch league. The minutes ticked by, and before they knew it, it was almost the end of the detention.

Albus was enjoying himself, and remembered something that James and Fred had told him.

 _"All we do is sit in his office and he talks to us about random stuff," Fred added in. "We can trust him with anything, and he doesn't tell anyone!"_

Clearly they'd been lying about being in his office, but Albus had come to think he was more than trustworthy. He decided to bring up what he saw on the Map.

He showed Professor Smith the map and explained everything about it, right down to the way that Merlin had appeared on it. He didn't tell Professor Smith about Prissy and the Room of Requirement, thinking that was more personal. Professor Smith was amazed by the map, but didn't think Merlin was really in Hogwarts.

"If Merlin is still out there, then Hogwarts would probably be the last place he visited," he said.

"But Merlin's not out there, is he?" Matt said. "I mean, he lived centuries ago, so he'd be dead by now."

Professor Smith thought for a second, before saying "Merlin was a very powerful and intelligent wizard. There are ways to live forever, though few try to go down that path, and those that do normally end up ghosts. Or worse."

"So Merlin is still alive?" Albus asked.

"I don't know," Professor Smith answered honestly. "He could be. There are people who believe that he never died, or that he couldn't die because fate itself couldn't bear to kill him. Some believe that he didn't die, but instead became one with nature, and he is still alive in that way. Others say that as long as his memory and legacy live on, it doesn't matter whether he's alive or not."

"I don't get it," Matt said.

"You're not meant to," Professor Smith said as if it was true wisdom. "Merlin's capacity as a wizard was far beyond anyone else in history, so to claim that anyone understood him is ridiculous."

Albus and Matt just sat there, completely absorbed in what Professor Smith was saying.

"Now," he said cheerily, changing the mood drastically. "We are all out of butterbeer, and it is nearly the end of your detention. I believe it would be appropriate to give you an early minute, since you've been such good students during this time."

Albus and Matt both laughed.

"Thank you, Professor," Albus said to him.

"No problem, Albus. I'll see you at class tomorrow. You know the way back to your common room?"

They both nodded.

"Good, then go on your way. Farewell."

They both got up and walked back in the hall.

"Oh, and another thing!" Professor Smith yelled at them as they were about to leave the hall. He ran out to them. "I understand that you've been having a hard time of things after all that happened when I took away house points from you. Take this as an apology. And fifty points to Gryffindor for seeking extra credit and inquiring about wizarding history outside of class."

Professor Smith smiled, and Albus ran up to him and hugged him. Smith was taken aback, but he embraced Albus anyway. After a long hug, Albus let go and he and Matt left the hall.


	9. Chapter 8: Christmas Break

December kept going, and Albus' classes only got easier. After he and Matt had made back fifty of the house points he'd lost, people in Gryffindor were more willing to let them be. It seemed that Kieren was now the only person who really held a grudge against him besides Cameron.

While Albus was still barely scraping through in Transfiguration, he was excelling in Potions and Charms, with Slughorn even inviting him back to the Slug Club one night. Albus declined the invitation, which annoyed Professor Slughorn very much.

History of Magic was just as boring as ever, and Albus typically used it to catch up on sleep since he wasn't getting it much at night anymore, preferring instead to look over the Marauder's Map. The anomalies he had seen appeared to repeat themselves quite regularly, with Merlin appearing all over the castle and disappearing almost every night. Prissy's midnight trips were slightly less common, but she seemed to do it, following the same route, about once a week. He still had no idea what she was doing. He was too scared to ask her, and decided against taking another trip for fear of Professor Abel catching him again. He'd barely escaped punishment the last time. This would have to remain a mystery for him.

Another thing that had become a pattern was Merrill Bonham and his thugs chasing Albus, Matt and Rose around the castle. Sometimes they got away safely, sometimes they didn't. They'd had to go to the hospital wing a few times to get healed by Madam Pomfrey, but she was kind enough not to ask them how they got into trouble. The worst that ever happened was Matt's hands and feet getting swapped around by some hex from Bonham, and they were lucky in that respect. They always managed to dodge all of the more powerful spells that the Slytherins fired at them.

One day, they weren't so lucky.

It was just after supper that Merrill had found them. "Ickle firsties should be going to bed soon," he's said as he began his pursuit, firing curses and hexes at them, not caring if he actually hit them or not. He'd chased them to the Charms corridor when finally he hit a target, as a stunner hit Rose right in the back.

"Rose!" Albus shouted when he saw her fall. He stopped running immediately and kneeled down to help her, but she had gone unconscious. Matt stopped too and crouched down to look.

"Albus, they're right behind us," he said. "They'll get us if we don't start moving, and who knows what they'll do!"

"But we have to help Rose or she's gone for sure!" Albus said back.

"Don't worry firsties, we just want to discipline you so you know to go straight to bed after supper," Albus heard Bonham say behind him. He turned around and looked up, and the three Slytherins were right there.

"Isn't that a prefects job?" a voice behind him said. Bonham turned around, and Albus leaned to the side to see who it was.

"Dominique!"

She was standing next to her friend Alea Sanders and the other fifth-year prefect, Evan Mathewson. Dominique and Alea looked very intimidating. Evan, not so much.

"Hey, Al. These three bothering you?" she asked casually.

"We're just making sure that these first-years are accustomed to Hogwarts rules. I mean, if they're going to represent the most prestigious wizarding school in Great Britain, they should at least be disciplined," Bonham said sarcastically.

"That's not your job," Evan said, trying to be intimidating, but failing at it. "Step aside and let us look at Rose."

"Or what?" Bonham said.

"Or we'll make you," Alea said simply. Bonham's thugs, Coel and Holmes, were starting to look uneasy, their wands shaking in their hands.

"Oh yeah?" Bonham said. "What's a midget and two lesbian sluts gonna do?"

The three fifth-years didn't even reply to this. They straight away started firing curses at the Slytherins, who didn't stand a chance. They were all disarmed easily by the Gryffindors, and soon Coel's legs had turned to wood and Holmes had been turned bald and knocked unconscious. Bonham lasted a bit longer, but soon he was hit by a jelly-legs curse, and he couldn't defend himself anymore.

The three Gryffindors walked up to him, the last one standing, and Dominique punched him in the nose, knocking him out. She looked at Albus and Matt. "Get her to the hospital wing, make sure they didn't do anything else to her," she said. "And hopefully they've learnt their lesson and won't bother you anymore."

"That was amazing!" Albus exclaimed.

"Thank you," Evan said, bowing.

"What's a lesbian slut?" Matt asked, quite tactlessly.

Dominique and Alea looked at each other. Dominique eventually explained, "You know how most of the time guys like girls and girls like guys? Well a lesbian is a girl who likes girls."

"But what about the slut part?" Matt pressed on.

"That's an insult he tried to use. It's a bad thing, and that's all you should know about it," Dominique said. "I think he's learnt never to use it again."

"You two should go take Rose to the hospital wing at once!" Evan suddenly yelled. "Don't worry about these three, they'll probably be caught after curfew and given detentions, I'd expect."

"And if they ever try to bully you guys again," Alea finished off. "Tell us, and we'll make them wish they'd never been born."

The three fifth-years went off, with Albus and Matt still in awe of them. After a minute, they picked up Rose and took her to the hospital wing where Madam Pomfrey revived her.

On the train home for Christmas Break, Albus, Rose and Matt sat with Howard. By the time the train got to King's Cross, they were a bit upset that they'd sat with Howard, and were more than eager to get off of the train as soon as possible so as to be a large distance away from Howard. Albus didn't really dislike Howard, it was just that he had a tendency to talk too much, and Albus just couldn't endure more than an hour of him at a time.

Albus and Rose were quick to spot their mothers, who had both come to take them home. They ran up to them and hugged them tightly.

"Calm down Albus! It's like you haven't seen me in months!" his mother joked as she pulled away from the strong embrace. "How was school?"

"It was great!" Albus exclaimed. "But some of the teachers are a bit boring. Where's dad and Lily?"

"Lily's at home with the Scamanders, they're staying over at the moment. I thought it was better to leave her with them than risk her trying to sneak onto the Hogwarts express while we're here. And your father's in Romania," his mother said. "He's had to go this morning to help your Uncle Ron for a while with Auror business, but he'll be back before Christmas. He'll be very interested to know how your first year at Hogwarts is going, you haven't owled us in months!"

"I've been busy!" Albus said, hoping this was a good excuse. The truth was he'd been distracted by the Marauder's Map. He then remembered that he hadn't really talked to anyone about seeing Merlin on it for a long time. He thought that he might be able to talk to his dad, since James said that the Map belonged to him. Then he remembered that James and Fred had actually stolen it.

Albus started telling his mother all about what had happened while he'd been at school. He told her about all of her classes, and she'd laughed when she heard that Professor Binns was still teaching History of Magic.

After what seemed like hours to Albus, James left his friends and joined them, meaning that they could finally go home. The five of them squashed into the same car with Hermione driving them. She was a very good driver, but quite often got angry at the muggles on the road who didn't seem to know what they were doing at all. Throughout the journey Albus heard her yelling about the various things that the other drivers were doing wrong.

Hermione dropped off the Potters at their house before driving off with Rose to their home. Albus noticed that decorations were already going up in preparation for Christmas, as there was a lot more red and green than normal around their house. All he was able to do for hours when he got home was to answer Lily's million and three questions about what Hogwarts was like.

"Did you see any ghosts? How tall is it? When do you have to go to bed? Are there any secret passages? What's your favourite place? James says the kitchens have thousands of house-elves!"

Albus spent some time answering her questions, but he didn't want to spoil anything for her before she went there herself, so he left most of the details for her to find out.

"You don't want to get to Hogwarts and already know everything!" he told her so that she would give him a break for a while.

"Ok," Lily said a bit upset. "But I have more questions I want to ask you later."

Albus spent a lot of time hanging out with Lorcan and Lysander Scamander, who were still little kids, having turned five a few months earlier. They were just as enthusiastic as Lily about Hogwarts, but at least they were easily distracted when Albus started showing them the magic he could do. Since he'd finally gotten the hang of a few charms, he was able to amaze them by levitating their shoes off of the ground.

Albus was enjoying being able to sleep in and not worry about missing breakfast, so he found himself waking up at noon most days. When he did wake up, it was normally Lorcan and Lysander eager to go out and play Quidditch with him. They played three-a-side Quidditch every day, with Albus, James and Lorcan taking on Teddy, Lily and Lysander. They didn't let their mum play because they knew that without their dad there was no way they could beat her. She was always busy talking to Rolf and Luna Scamander about something, anyway.

The night before Christmas, Albus' Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur came to their house. Albus was a bit disappointed that Victoire, Dominique and Louis didn't come with them, but he was even more disappointed when he was sent to his room almost as soon as they'd arrived. It wasn't even his bedtime yet, but he didn't want to complain and get into an argument with his mother. They didn't stay long, though, as Albus was still awake when he heard them leave.

When Christmas finally came, he was overjoyed. His entire family was coming to his house to celebrate since it was the biggest, and his dad only arrived back from Romania that day. For some reason his Uncle Ron hadn't come back with him, but since his dad didn't talk about it he figured it wasn't something to worry about. After his dad got home, a flood of people started coming in with massive bags full of Christmas presents. First it was Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur, with Victoire, Dominique and Louis carrying the presents for them. Strangely, Albus saw that Alea Sanders had come with them. Before he had time to wonder why, in came Uncle George and Aunt Angelina with Fred and Roxanne. The moment Fred walked through the door, he and James were up in James' room and the sound of explosions could be heard along with the quiet chatter of people talking to each other. Next, Uncle Percy and Aunt Audrey got there with Molly and Lucy. After that, a sheepish-looking Dudley Dursley came in. Dudley was Albus' dad's cousin, but the two seemed more like brothers because they'd grown up in the same house. Dudley was a muggle, and always felt like he didn't fit in with the magical folk, but he was always invited to Christmas lunch with them. After that, Grandad and Grandma Weasley arrived. They were the most warmly embraced by everyone, and had by far the most presents.

The last group to come was the one that Albus had been anticipating the most. And finally, almost an hour after the first Weasleys had arrived, his Aunt Hermione came in with Rose and Hugo. Albus ran up to Rose and hugged her, and the two immediately headed off up the stairs to Albus' room.

"Where do you think you two are going?" Albus' dad interrupted.

"My room," Albus answered.

"I don't think so," his dad said. "You have to stay out here and talk to everyone for a while."

"But Fred and James are in James' room!" Albus complained.

"That's more for everyone's safety than anything else," his dad said. "Besides, they'll have to come down in a few minutes anyway, we're about to start lunch."

Sure enough, a few minutes later they all gathered around the massive dining table. Every year, Albus was amazed by the way that his parents magically enlarged the room so that everyone could fit, but they somehow managed to do it. Even this year with the Scamanders joining them, everybody fit comfortably in a room that would normally only fit the five of them. The more impressive part was cooking for everyone.

As usual, the food was brilliant. His parents were great chefs, which Rose seemed to appreciate as much as the food at Hogwarts, eating almost as much as anyone else. The feast was followed by the massive family exchanging presents with each other.

If there was one plus side to having a massive family, it was the number of presents that Albus got at Christmas. His parents had given him a new broom, which was really exciting because it was a Nimbus 3000, and his dad had brought Uncle Charlie's presents from Romania, which were dragon fangs for everyone. Uncle Bill gave him a packet of sugar quills, which his mother had assumed to be normal quills and paid no mind to. Uncle George gave him an all-new product from Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes which wasn't even out in shops yet. It was called Ghost Gum, and it was a piece of chewing gum that basically turned you into a ghost so you could walk through walls and scare people. Aunt Hermione gave him some novels to read by a muggle called J.R.R. Tolkien, but Albus didn't really look forward to reading them because they looked so long. Uncle Percy gave all of the children fifty-year diaries, saying that if they started writing in them now and became famous they could sell them as their autobiography. Albus didn't like the idea of selling it, but he thought it might be a good idea to at least write in it sometimes. Dudley gave him a muggle board game called Risk which he thought looked fun, but a bit complicated. The Scamanders gave him a book called "More Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them". Apparently it was written by Rolf's grandfather and would be helpful if he took Care of Magical Creatures in his third year. Finally, everybody was given their Weasley jumpers. These were jumpers that were hand-knitted by Grandma Weasley, and every year everyone got one for Christmas. Albus' was emerald green, the same colour as his dad's, but with a silver 'A' on it as opposed to the yellow 'H' on his dad's. By coincidence, these were the same two colours as Slytherin house, which had always meant that James and Fred would pay him out about the possibility of being sorted into Slytherin. Surprisingly, him being sorted into Gryffindor this year meant that they toned it down a bit. Rose's jumper was brown with a silver 'R' on it, as it had been every year, which she really didn't like, but she didn't want to complain because Grandma Weasley was so nice.

After the presents were all given out, everybody went outside for an epic game of Quidditch. This was a family tradition, that every year the adults would play against the kids in a very important game of Quidditch. So far, the parents had won every year. As usual, Teddy was the kids' captain and Albus' dad was the adults' captain, both of them being Seekers for their team. Albus was chosen to be a Chaser since it was the first time he'd get to ride his new broom, and Dominique and Louis were made the other Chasers. Usually Fred would also be a Chaser, but he agreed to sit it out so that Albus could try out his new broom. Victoire was their Keeper and Molly and James were their Beaters. This year's team was the strongest the kids' team had ever been. The adults were very strong, too, even without Uncle Ron keeping for them. Albus' mum, Uncle Bill and Aunt Angelina were their Chasers, Uncle George and Rolf Scamander were their Beaters, and Uncle Percy had agreed to be their Keeper for the first time ever.

When the game started, Albus was the first person to get the Quaffle. His superior broom made things very easy for him, and since Uncle Percy wasn't a very good player, he was able to get quite a few shots past him. Unfortunately, the parents were better Chasers. Even though Victoire was an amazing Keeper and made heaps of great saves, they were too experienced and got plenty of goals in past her. The scores were very tight, which means that whoever caught the snitch would win the game. And everybody knew that it would be Albus' dad.

As Albus scored his tenth goal, levelling the scores at 190-190, the people on the ground started yelling "He's seen the snitch!". Everybody stopped playing to watch Harry and Teddy fly for the snitch. They were equally matched for speed, but when it came to grabbing the snitch, Albus was bigger and able to push Teddy out of the way so that he could get it. Before Teddy could recover from the bump, Harry had a firm grasp on the golden snitch.

"Adults win!"

The adults cheered a bit, but all of the kids groaned. This was the fifth year they'd played this game, and they were still yet to win one. They were going to have to wait until the next year.

"But did you see how close Teddy was to catching the snitch?" James said as they all landed. "He'll catch it for sure next year, dad's getting real old and slow."

Everybody laughed at James' comment about his father's age, and then they all went back inside. Over the next few hours, the families left one by one, going to other commitments they had for the day. By evening, it was just the five Potters and Teddy Lupin.

The day after Christmas, Albus didn't have Lorcan and Lysander to wake him up, so he ended up sleeping well into the afternoon. By the time he did finally wake up, the house was very empty.

Albus went downstairs from his room and saw that the only person in the house was Teddy.

"Where is everyone?" he asked.

"They've all gone to the Ministry," Teddy answered. "Your dad took everyone there for a visit so he could show them around. They were going to take you, but when they saw you were still asleep, they decided to leave you be."

Albus was a bit disappointed by this, he hadn't been to the Ministry many times before, and he always found it very exciting. He also realized that he wouldn't be able to talk to his dad about the Marauder's Map until he got back.

"So are we the only ones here?" Albus asked Teddy.

"Not quite," Teddy said smiling. He pointed behind Albus into the kitchen, and Albus turned around to see Victoire standing in the doorway.

"Hi Al," she said.

"Hi," Albus said back. "Why are you here?"

"Aren't I allowed to spend time with my boyfriend?" she asked.

Albus was a bit taken aback. He knew something was going on between them, it was quite obvious, but this was the first time either of them had said anything about it explicitly.

Albus figured he should leave those two alone for a while. He realized how hard it must have been for them with Victoire at Hogwarts for months and Teddy at home. He walked past Victoire and into the kitchen where he made himself toast. After eating it, he went back into the lounge room to talk to Teddy and Victoire. He walked in, but saw that they were rolling around on a couch snogging, so he walked back out and made himself some more toast. After he'd repeated this for an hour, his stomach couldn't handle any more toast, so he decided to just interrupt them.

He walked into the room and cleared his throat. The two of them fell off of the couch and Teddy rocketed into a standing position.

"Hi, Al! We were just-"

"I know what you were doing," Albus said. "I am eleven."

"Right, of course," Teddy said.

"Oh, and Victoire, can I ask you something?" Albus said to Victoire.

"Sure," she replied, sitting up on a chair.

"Why was Alea here for Christmas lunch yesterday?"

"Because she's Dominique's girlfriend now," Victoire replied.

"Oh," Albus said. He was a bit confused for a second. Then he remembered what Merrill Bonham had said when they were back at Hogwarts. He had called her a 'lesbian slut'. Albus didn't know what a slut was, but he now knew that she was in fact a lesbian. He didn't know why, but it felt somehow weird to know this.

For the next half an hour, Teddy amused Albus and Victoire by transforming himself in different ways. Being a metamorphmagus, he could transform to look like anything he wanted. Usually his appearance stayed the same, a quite tall brown-haired nineteen-year-old. After a moment's concentration, however, he could become anybody. He was doing an imitation of the Minister of Magic, a rather short and fat man, when suddenly their fireplace almost exploded with a flash of green. Their family had returned from the Ministry. Strangely, rather than coming one by one, they had all come in at once, coughing and spluttering, with Lily screaming her face off. His mother and James coughed and spluttered their way out of the fireplace.

"What's going on!" Albus yelled at them. "Why'd you all come through at once!"

"Someone's attacked the Ministry!" his mother said between coughs, yelling over the sound of Lily's screaming. "Lily! Calm down! We're back home now!"

"Where's Uncle Harry?" Victoire asked.

"He's in there helping to stop the attacker," she replied.

"I should go and help," Teddy began, shifting back into his normal form and starting to make his way to the fireplace.

"No! You are not going in there," she said, putting her foot down. "Nobody is leaving this house until the attack is over."

His mother took Lily out of the room and into her bedroom to calm her down. After a moment of silence, Albus asked James "So what actually happened?"

"Well dad was showing us his office and introducing us to a couple of his co-workers. One guy was Arthur Spencer, and he looked awesome. Like he was bald and had a scar on his scalp that he said was from a werewolf attack when he fought in the war against You-Know-Who. Apparently he's been an Auror for decades, the best Auror between Mad-Eye Moody and dad. He knew what he was talking about, too. He-"

"Is this important?" Teddy interrupted.

"No, not really. But I thought he was pretty cool," James said sheepishly. "Anyway, he was introducing us to a few Aurors, when some people downstairs started yelling. We were up pretty high, like we could see most of London from where we were. It was kinda scary looking down out the window, 'cause we were like nine stories up, but-"

"Stop getting side-tracked, James!" Teddy interrupted again.

"Sorry, it was just really interesting. Anyway, there was shouting downstairs. That's when someone ran up to our floor and yelled 'We're under attack!', so everybody started screaming and panicking. Mum and dad rushed us downstairs so that we could floo back home, but when we got to the ground floor, we found out that that's where they were attacking. There were these masked wizards firing spells at everyone trying to make their way towards something. Dad told us to go home and that they needed his and Arthur Spencer's help. That's when we left. I think I saw dad firing spells at the masked wizards just before we left, and Arthur Spencer looked pretty awesome when he started duelling against one of them."

"So do you know who was attacking?" Albus asked.

"I dunno. They were all wearing masks," James said.

"Why did they attack?" Teddy asked.

"No, dad made us leave pretty quickly, so I didn't get to find anything out."

"When's dad going to be back?" Albus asked.

"I dunno, whenever he's done I guess. Should be pretty quick with him and Arthur Spencer working together. Apparently that guy was once fighting five Death Eaters at once when one of them disarmed him, so he used wandless magic to stun the guy and get his wand back while dodging killing curses from all directions!"

James really did seem to like this Arthur Spencer guy.

"I've met him," Teddy said. "He's not that impressive, really. Harry's a way better dueller."

"Yeah, dad's better, but he's like the next best thing. Plus he's old, so he's not as good as he used to be," James said, trying to come up with an excuse for Spencer.

About half an hour later, their dad came back through the fireplace, panting a bit and looking very tired. James ran up to him excitedly and said, "Did you win?"

Harry took a second to catch his breath, but smiled and said "Yes, we won."

"What happened?" Albus asked him.

"It was a group of witches called the Fays," he explained. "They're a clan that claims to be descended from Morgana, and they said that they wanted their inheritance. They started to cause a disturbance, and one Auror said they had to leave, so they killed him," he said solemnly. Everybody gasped.

"What, just like that?" Teddy asked. "Because he asked them to leave?"

"Yes, Teddy. Everybody was a bit shocked, and the first person to respond decide to attack them. Soon spells were firing everywhere, and nobody could tell what was going on. People went into panic mode and fired spells at anyone who came their way, friend or foe. It was like being in a riot. We couldn't tell who was a Ministry worker and who was one of the Fays, and people were being killed all over the place. I think the official death count was twelve."

Albus was shocked. Twelve people had died? How were they supposed to know going to work that day that they would get caught in a fight like that and died? They didn't deserve to die, and Albus was angry at the Fays for doing something so horrible.

"So did you catch them?" James asked.

"The Fays? No. But we did get them out of the Ministry, and now they're officially wanted. For years we've been trying to catch them doing something illegal, but now we finally have evidence of them using Unforgivable Curses, so we can arrest them as soon as we find them," Harry said, as if there was some light at the end of the tunnel after all.

"Why did they attack?" Teddy asked.

"We think they wanted something we have hidden in the Department of Mysteries. That's where they seemed to be headed. Which also raises questions, like how they knew where the Department of Mysteries was. We think they had a spy on the inside of the Ministry, so we're trying to find out who at the moment."

"What did they want to steal?" Albus asked, now curious.

"I can't tell you that," his father said, smiling knowingly. "It's a secret."

Albus never got to catch his dad alone to talk to him about the Map. Whenever he thought he'd have a chance, someone else would show up and he didn't want to send them away and seem rude, so he just waited patiently for an opportunity to open up. Sadly, it didn't, and he found himself on Platform Nine and Three Quarters getting ready to get on the Hogwarts Express.

James and Fred helped him put his bags up on the train, and he waved goodbye to his mum from afar as he got on the train. He started looking around so that he could wave goodbye to his dad, when he got a tap on his shoulder. He turned around, and his dad was there. "Come over here for a second," he said to him, dragging him away from the train.

His dad crouched down to his height and said "I know you've been trying to get me alone for a while. It's great that you've been polite and waited, but if something's important you have to tell me so that we can talk."

"Sorry," Albus said.

"I'm not angry at you, I'm just letting you know for the future. Anyway, what's up?"

Albus suddenly realized he didn't exactly know how to tell his dad. "Well, do you know what the Marauder's Map is?"

"So that's where it went!" his dad said. "Did you take it or was it James?"

"It was James," Albus quickly said, passing the blame off of himself. "He gave it to me, but I left it at school, so I couldn't give it back to you."

"Don't worry, I don't really mind that you have it. In fact, I'm happy it's in your hands instead of James having it. No wonder he got up to so much mischief last year," he said, laughing to himself. "Is that it? You wanted to talk to me about that?"

"Sort of," Albus said. "You know how it shows names of people on it? Is it ever wrong?"

His dad smiled and said "The Marauder's Map never lies, Albus."

"Are you sure?" Albus asked again. "Because I think it told me someone was there, but they couldn't of been there because they're dead."

"Trust me, I have it on the highest authority that it is never wrong," his dad said. "Whose name did you see on it?"

Albus felt awkward, and thought that his dad wouldn't believe him. "Um, it said Merlin was in the Dungeons."

His dad froze and stared at him. "Are you sure that's what it said, Albus. I need you to be one hundred per cent certain about this." He looked dead serious, so Albus started to tremble and felt his heartbeat accelerate.

"Yes, I'm sure," he said nervously.

"Then something big is happening," his dad said. "I didn't tell you before because I wasn't meant to tell anybody, but do you remember when the Ministry was attacked?"

Albus nodded. "Yes, twelve people died."

"Well the people that did that, the Fays, they claim that they are descended from Morgana. And they also said that Merlin had returned, so they needed to fight him. We didn't believe them, but I think we'll have to take that seriously now."

"Really? Are you sure the map didn't just-"

"Albus, the Map is never wrong. The enchantments on it are too powerful for anything to interfere with it, so if it says that Merlin is in Hogwarts, then Merlin is in Hogwarts. You said he was in the Dungeons?"

"Yes," Albus said. "But he's not there all the time. His name keeps appearing and disappearing on the map."

"Well next time you see his name on the Map, send me an owl immediately. This is really important, Albus, and it's also really important that you don't tell anyone about it. Not even your teachers. Do you understand?"

Albus nodded. He suddenly felt guilty for already telling both Matt and Professor Smith. He decided not to tell his dad in case he got in trouble for it, so he just said "I understand."

"Good. Now you'd better get on the train, it looks like it's about to leave in a minute." The seriousness left his face, and he smiled at Albus again. "Have a good time at Hogwarts, Al."

Albus got on the train moments before it took off from the platform, and he started looking for the compartment with Matt in it. He needed to talk to him.


	10. Chapter 9: The Tunnel

It took a while, but eventually Albus found the compartment with Matt in it. Matt was accompanied by Vincent and Howard. Vincent was already quite sad, staring out of the window. Howard was talking Matt's head off, going on about his muggle sister or something.

Albus entered the compartment, and everybody looked at the door.

"Hey Albus!" Howard said enthusiastically.

"Hi," started Albus. "Um, Matt, can you come out here for a second?"

"Sure," Matt said, and the two of them went just outside the compartment.

"I need to talk to you about the whole Merlin thing," Albus said.

"Yeah, why? I thought we decided it was probably the Map messing up," Matt replied.

"That's what I thought, but I talked to my dad about it, and he reckons that Merlin was actually in the castle," Albus explained.

"Are you kidding?"

"No, he says that the Marauder's Map never lies. Apparently he knows a lot about it."

"Well he could still be wrong. Everybody makes mistakes."

"Yes, but the Map doesn't!" Albus practically yelled. "Look, he said that it's really important that I don't tell anybody about it, so if anybody asks you, you don't know anything about it, okay?"

"Why?"

"I don't know. He just says it's important. Can you promise not to tell anyone about it?"

"Sure, but what about Professor Smith? We already told him about it, didn't we?" Matt asked.

"Yeah, I haven't figured out what to do about that yet," Albus admitted. "I'll figure something out."

The next morning, Albus woke early and got to breakfast when the first few people were arriving. He took a seat at the Gryffindor table and started eating a plate of bacon and eggs. The Great Hall slowly filled up over the next hour or so, and Albus ended up in deep conversation with Rose and Matt about the homework that they hadn't done over Christmas break.

"Seriously guys? You had two whole weeks to write that essay! And it was only six inches of parchment!" Rose yelled at them.

"It's not my fault!" Matt defended himself. "I was travelling the whole time!"

"Travelling where?" Albus asked. Matt had never mentioned going abroad before.

"Well my relatives live all over England. We went to London, York, Hogsmeade,"

"That's not travelling," Rose said. "That wouldn't have taken you more than a few hours. You still had plenty of time to do your homework. And what about you, Al? You just stayed at home all break!"

Albus was about to answer, but suddenly the noise level in the Great Hall increased. Albus assumed that the owls had all arrived, but when he looked up there wasn't a single owl in the hall. "What's going on?" he asked to no one in particular.

"Look at the staff table," Matt said. Albus looked towards the staff table and saw that there were several people there who definitely weren't teachers, and one of them was his dad.

"What's he doing here?" Albus asked.

"I guess he took you really seriously yesterday," Matt replied.

"What do you mean?" Rose asked, but before anybody had a chance to reply, Headmaster Flitwick stood up on the table and addressed everybody. The mere sight of him climbing up was enough to silence the entire Hall.

"Students!" he yelled, his voice magically amplified. "We are joined today by some Aurors from the Ministry of Magic who are here to assist Professor Smith for the week in teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts!"

Albus got a better look at the Aurors, seeing that in addition to his dad, there was also a very tall wizard with a completely bald head and a very large scar across the top of his otherwise clean and shiny head. He assumed that this was the Arthur Spencer guy that James had been going on about. The other two Aurors were witches that Albus didn't recognize, but Professor Flitwick introduced them one by one.

"These are Aurors Summer Buckley, Kiara Morrison, Arthur Spencer, and Harry Potter. They are all alumni of Hogwarts from different houses and will be assisting with those houses during your lessons. I do hope that they will be able to assist you greatly," Flitwick said, and he then turned around and climbed back down off of the table.

"So your dad's going to be teaching us Defence Against the Dark Arts? That's awesome!" Matt said.

"Yeah," Albus replied. "He did this every year with the last Professor, and I guess Professor Smith wants to do it, too."

"Too bad we won't have him until tomorrow," Matt said disappointed, and he then went back to his breakfast.

After they finished their breakfast, Albus, Matt and Rose started to make their way to Charms, but they'd barely left the Great Hall when Albus' dad appeared in front of them.

"Hi Al," he said, grinning.

"Hi dad!" Albus said, hugging him tightly.

"Settle down, Al! Try not to break too many ribs!" his dad said jokingly. After Albus let go of him, he turned to Matt and Rose, and said "Can you two give us a minute?"

"Sure, Uncle Harry," Rose said, and the two of them went to Charms.

"Who was that boy?"

"That's Matt Longbottom," Albus explained.

"Oh? Is he related to Neville?" his dad asked.

"Yeah," Albus said. "They're fourth cousins three times removed or something like that. It changes every time they say it."

His dad looked confused, but after a moment lowered his voice and said "Anyway, I need to borrow the Map while I'm here."

"I knew that's why you were here! You're going to look for Merlin, aren't you?" Albus said excitedly.

His dad smiled. "Yes, Al, so can you get the Map for me?"

"Well it's in my dormitory, which is a long way away," Albus explained.

"Don't worry about being late to class, just tell Professor Paget that I needed your help with something," his dad said.

"Sure," Albus said, happy to have an excuse for being late. "So I'll just go to get the Map then."

"I'm going to come with you," his dad said. "I need to show you something else somewhere more secret."

"Okay," Albus said, and the two of them went off to the Gryffindor common room. Once Albus got the Map out from his bag and handed it to his dad, his dad took a piece of cloth that was black and shiny out of his pocket.

"What's that?" Albus asked.

"This, Albus, is an Invisibility Cloak," his dad explained. "When you're wearing it, you become completely invisible."

"That's awesome!" Albus yelled. "Why are you showing it to me?"

"I'm not showing it to you, I'm giving it to you. You need it more than I do," his dad said, grinning wildly.

"No way!" Albus exclaimed as his dad handed it to him. "Why do I need it more than you do?"

"Because I need you to keep an eye on things, and it's imperative that you are not seen. If you see something suspicious on the Map, investigate it and then Owl me straight away."

"Will do!" Albus said. He was happier than he had been for a long time.

"Now you'd best be going off to Charms. And I've got a seventh-year class that I'm meant to be helping right now. Good luck, Albus."

During the week, Albus had two Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons. The class was taught the disarming spell, mainly because it was his dad's signature spell and everybody wanted him to teach them. His dad taught all of the Gryffindors, so Albus got to spend a lot of time one on one with him. Sadly, nothing seemed to come of the investigation there. His dad could only inform him that the one time he'd seen Merlin on the Map, he'd gone by the time the Aurors had made it to the Dungeons.

Besides this, Albus seemed to notice that a lot of the students were giving his dad special attention. He knew that his dad was famous, but some of it was just ridiculous. Yvonne couldn't utter a word when he was around, and a group of fourth-years decided to become his entourage, following him around whenever he wasn't teaching. This made watching the Marauder's Map very difficult, because he didn't want any of the students to find out about it, knowing the mischief they'd get up to if they used it.

This popularity seemed to correlate with a sudden surge in the popularity of Albus. Suddenly students that he'd never met before would randomly come up to him and make conversation, and they would act as though they were all best buddies with him. This was exactly the opposite of how people had been treating him beforehand. But he wasn't the boy who lost them one hundred and fifty house points anymore, he was now the son of Harry Potter.

The only person in Gryffindor that didn't seem to adore 'The Boy-Who-Lived' was Kieran. Kieran was sick of all of the attention that Albus was getting because of his dad, and he started to spite Albus a lot. He'd trip Albus over in the corridors whenever he got the chance, and he'd started to spread rumours about Albus, too. Albus was shocked at the number of people who came up to him and asked him if he had really robbed Gringrott's Bank. Elise and Brianna also seemed to detest him slightly, if only for Kieran's sake. They were never specifically mean to him, but they would always back Kieran if it ever came to a fight, which only happened once that Friday afternoon.

After Transfiguration had ended, Kieran was quick to leave the room. Once Albus had exited with the rest of the class, he saw a foot come out right in front of him too quickly for him to avoid it. Yet again, Kieran had tripped him over. This time, however, Albus didn't just take it.

"You think that's funny?" Albus asked while Kieran was laughing at him.

"Trust me," Kieran said smiling. "It's hilarious."

"Will you still think it's funny when I've knocked your front teeth out of your mouth?" Albus asked, trying to intimidate Kieran.

"Please, as if you could do anything more than give me a scratch," Kieran said laughing.

Albus lost it and jumped off of the ground and onto him. He held Kieran down with one hand and pulled the other one back, ready to punch him. He was interrupted by a chant starting up around him. The other first-years had gathered around in a big circle and started yelling "Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!"

He was about to punch Kieran when someone grabbed his arm from behind. He turned his head and saw it was Rose, and she said "Don't fight him, it's not worth it."

While Albus was looking at Rose and about to reply, he received a knock to the back of his head from Kieran. He fell over, and the first-years all gasped. He slowly got up, and was going to lunge at Kieran again, but Rose beat him to it. She forced him to the ground and started punching him. She stopped once his nose started bleeding, and said "That's what you get for punching someone with their back turned, coward."

Everybody started cheering, but they were interrupted by a stern voice saying "What's going on here?"

They all turned around and saw that Professor Abel was now watching them.

"Miss Weasley! I expect better from students at this school. Fifty points from Gryffindor and you have detention with me for the next month!"

Everybody groaned, and Rose looked especially angry. This was the first detention she'd ever received at school.

"Mister Potter, can you please escort Mister Macmillan to the Hospital Wing?"

"Yes, Professor," Albus said reluctantly. He grabbed Kieran fiercely by the arm and pulled him to his feet, before pushing him in the direction of the Hospital Wing. As soon as he got there, he turned around and walked away.

"You'll get what's coming for you Potter," Kieran said behind him. "I promise."

Albus avoided his dad at dinner that night, and he left early to go to the common room. Matt followed him, and the two of them walked up the stairs by themselves. When they were about to enter the Gryffindor common room, Matt said "Is that Prissy?"

Albus turned around, and he saw that Prissy Greengrass was indeed walking through a corridor away from them.

"Maybe she's going to the Room of Requirement," Albus suggested.

"We should follow her and see what she's up to," Matt said. "Too bad we can't. She'd go back downstairs if she saw us following her. Then we wouldn't find anything out."

"Actually, we can follow her," Albus said, and he quickly ran into the common room, yelling "Keep an eye on her!" back to Matt.

He went to his bed and got the Invisibility Cloak, pulling it over himself. He then rummaged through his bag until he found the gum that Uncle George had given him. He ran back and saw that Matt had gone off, probably following Prissy. He assumed that she'd be going to the Room of Requirement and that Matt was probably also heading there. He got to the door and saw that Matt was there, but Matt didn't see him because he was invisible. When he pulled the cloak off of himself, Matt was amazed.

"How did you do that?" he asked.

"It's an Invisibility Cloak," Albus explained. "Here, I think it's big enough to fit both of us, so we can follow her in the room."

"I don't think we can, mate, the door is locked," Matt said.

"I'm prepared for that too," he said, pulling the gum out of his pocket. "This is Ghost Gum, it lets you walk through walls."

"Where did you get that?" Matt asked, amazed again.

"My uncle runs a joke shop, and this is one of his newest products," Albus said. "Put some in your mouth and start chewing," he said as he pushed a piece of gum into Matt's hand. The two of them started chewing and Albus then pulled the Invisibility Cloak over them.

"Ready?" Albus asked.

"Yes," Matt said. "Are you sure this gum works?"

"I'm sure. My uncle wouldn't give it to me if it didn't," Albus said, confidently.

"But you said it's a product for a joke shop," Matt said. "What if the joke is that it doesn't actually work."

Albus realized that he hadn't considered that, and it sort of made sense. "We'll just have to hope that's not the case," he said, losing all confidence.

"Well there's only one way to find out," Matt said, and the two walked towards the door into the Room of Requirement. Albus closed his eyes and held his breath as he approached the door, preparing for impact when they hit the door.

The impact never came. When Albus opened his eyes, they were through to the other side. He nudged Matt, who had also been closing his eyes, and whispered "We're in!"

Matt opened his eyes and looked around, before whispering "I can't see anything!"

Albus looked around, too. The room was very dark indeed, and Albus could barely make out anything, let alone Prissy. The two of them stood still for a while under the cloak while their eyes adjusted to the darkness. When Albus could finally see again, he saw that they were in a very small room with no features beyond the walls. Prissy wasn't even there.

"Where is she?" Albus whispered to Matt as he took the gum out of his mouth.

"I don't know, I can't see her," Matt replied, also taking the gum out of his mouth. "But she might've gone through that tunnel, there."

Albus looked where Matt was pointing and saw that there was in fact a tunnel. He wasn't surprised that he hadn't seen it to start with considering it was so dark.

"Do we follow her," Matt asked.

"I guess so. We've come this far," Albus replied.

"What?" Matt asked.

"I said we've come this far," Albus whispered a bit louder.

"Why are we even still whispering if she's not here?" Matt asked.

"I don't know," Albus said. "She might be just inside the tunnel. We can't exactly see inside."

"So are we going to go in?" Matt asked.

"Yes, let's go," Albus said. The two of them then walked towards the tunnel, climbing into it and crouching so that they'd fit in. The tunnel ended up being a lot longer than Albus had expected, and it took them quite some time to get to the end of it. Albus was starting to wonder if they should go back to get in their common room before curfew when they finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel. When they got to the light, they saw that it was coming from a room, but they had no idea where the room was.

The room was very bright, and it took a minute for their eyes to readjust, but they could hear two voices talking to each other. One was recognizably Prissy's voice, but Albus couldn't place the other voice. Once he could see into the room, he saw that Prissy was indeed there, and she was talking to a really old witch.

"But how am I supposed to know where it is? I've looked everywhere I can think of, and I don't even think it's at Hogwarts anymore!" Prissy was saying.

"You're not looking hard enough," the old witch said back. "It was there when I taught at the school and I highly doubt that Albus Dumbledore would move it from there. He was a firm believer that Hogwarts is the safest place in the world."

"But Dumbledore isn't the headmaster anymore, Flitwick is," Prissy said. "And how do you know that he would want to keep it there, too?"

"Because Flitwick didn't even know it existed!" the old witch said. "It was kept secret from all of the other staff members."

"Well where was it then?" Prissy yelled. "You keep telling me it's somewhere in Hogwarts, but how am I supposed to find it if I don't know where it is!"

"It would be pointless to tell you where it is because the room moves around!" the old witch yelled back. "It's a room that was originally the Great Hall, but it became too small for the increasing number of students at the school, so it was replaced by a new one. This one then had no need to be there, so it was charmed to move from place to place. There is no way of knowing where it will appear."

Matt leaned in to Albus and whispered, "What are they talking about?"

Albus whispered back "I don't know."

"What was that noise?" the old witch asked, suddenly turning to the direction of the tunnel. Albus and Matt ducked down, even though they were still under the Invisibility Cloak and there was no way that the witch could see them. "I heard something from over there," the witch continued.

Prissy turned around and looked straight at Albus. He got spooked and grabbed Matt and ran, barely holding the Invisibility Cloak over him. He heard the old witch yell something and ducked just below a flash of green that had gone their way. Albus and Matt kept running, the voices from the room getting quieter and quieter as they got further and further away. After they got to the Room of Requirement, they ran out of the door and straight towards their common room. They put the Ghost Gum back in their mouths and ran through the portrait of the Fat Lady, too scared to stop and say the password. They only stopped once they were safe in their dormitory.

Albus and Matt had an unspoken agreement not to talk to each other about what happened when they went through the tunnel, and a spoken agreement never to talk to Rose about it. They were less scared about Prissy finding out that they'd followed her and more scared about the wrath of Rose. She was bad enough to deal with most of the time, but she was even more angry now having received her first ever detention.

Albus' father and the three Aurors were all leaving on Saturday, having spent a week at Hogwarts. Albus decided to tell his dad about the tunnel and what he saw at breakfast.

"So you don't know who the old witch was?" his dad asked him.

"No," Albus replied.

"And you don't know what they were talking about?"

"No."

"Do you know where the room was?"

"No."

"That's not much to go on, Al," his dad joked.

"I know, but I thought it was important," Albus replied quietly.

"It certainly is important," his dad replied. "It was probably somewhere in Hogsmeade, so I think I'll go take a look to see if there's anything suspicious going on, but I don't think I'll find anything today. We'll have to come back again to have a better look. If you ever see her go into the tunnel again, owl me and follow her in. I should be able to use your trace to find the room. Oh, and here's the Marauder's Map," he said, handing Albus the piece of parchment.

"So you are leaving today?" Albus asked him sadly.

"Yes, sorry Al. The Ministry only let us come for a certain amount of time. But don't worry, you'll see me again at Easter break."

Albus doubted this very much based on how little he'd seen of his dad during the last break from school. His dad hadn't shown up until Christmas Day, and it would probably be the same again this time around. It seemed like his dad was busier with Auror business now that Albus was at school than he had been for the last eleven years. The same was true of his Uncle Ron, who still hadn't come back from Romania. Albus had no idea what kind of work would force him to stay abroad for such a long time.

When Albus returned to his table, he was immediately distracted by discussion about the upcoming Quidditch game. Gryffindor were playing Hufflepuff, and it was a must-win game for them since Ravenclaw had beaten Hufflepuff by so much last time.

"The fact is that Liam Sinclair is a rubbish Seeker. He was horrible against Ravenclaw and he'll be horrible again this time," James was saying matter-of-factly.

"But Keys isn't too good either," his friend Marty Lum said. "She cost us a win against Slytherin. It's a wonder she's even in the team. I guess we don't have any good reserve Seekers."

"But it's not just Sinclair," Fred said. "Their entire team is bad! They have the slowest Chasers in the school, their Beaters can't hold a bat right, and their Keeper let Ravenclaw's Chasers score two hundred and fifty points last game!"

"But we don't have a guaranteed win," Marty reiterated. "We thought we did last time and it only ended up being a tie."

Albus had to admit that it was looking like Gryffindor were going to have their biggest win since Teddy had graduated, but Marty also had a point. Being too confident could cost them a win if the team wasn't ready to fight for it.

Luckily, Gryffindor were there to thrash Hufflepuff from the beginning.

"And that goal from Weasley increases Gryffindor's lead yet again! The score is now two hundred and ten to ninety."

It was almost unbelievable how well Gryffindor were playing. Victoire was having a bad day, which was the only reason that Hufflepuff were even chance. From the way that Dominique was playing, you'd think she was a professional. Hufflepuff were scared to pass the ball because she intercepted almost every pass that they tried to throw to each other.

"Oooh, and Victoire Weasley takes a hit to the stomach! What a hit from Hufflepuff captain Holly Hayley to catch her unawares! She's taking a while to recover from the bludger, and that leaves the window open for Drake to score! Hufflepuff are not out of this if Sinclair can catch the snitch, the score is two hundred and ten to one hundred."

This was the highest scoring game of the year. Hiram Parent was just a bad Keeper, but with Victoire also having a very bad time, the scoring was flowing very quickly. Hufflepuff were managing to keep the lead within one hundred and fifty points, knowing that Slytherin were in a similar position but had managed to force a draw.

"And Keys has seen the snitch!"

Everybody's attention turned from the rest of the game to Amelia Keys, who was going into a very fast dive. Sinclair was much closer to the snitch than Keys, but he was also a lot slower on his broom.

"Keys is catching Sinclair, and it looks like she's going to get to the snitch first. She's gaining on him, and she's pulling up alongside him. He's swerving a bit, doesn't seem to have much control of his broom. And he's bumped into her! Keys has almost fallen off of her broom! Sinclair isn't having a good time of it either. They've both recovered, but the snitch is nowhere to be seen, now."

Everyone in Gryffindor was now booing very loudly. They had been very close to winning the game, their first win for the year, and a Hufflepuff Seeker had messed it up for them. It would've been fine if he'd meant to do that, but it was clear that he just had no control over his broom.

"And attention turns back to the Quaffle, which is now in the hands of Simpson. Simpson passes to Drake who passes back to Simpson in a nice move to get around Davies, there. That's great experience from Drake to know to pass it back so quickly. Simpson passes it to Mondy, now. And Mondy is approaching the goals, she should go for a shot here. She's tried to pass back to Simpson and it's been intercepted by Weasley!"

Gryffindor's booing quickly turned into an eruption of cheers and Dominique charged towards their goals.

"All of the Hufflepuff Chasers have been left in her dust and there's no one between her and Parent! She goes for the shot, and it's passed him! Ten more points to Gryffindor! They now lead two hundred and twenty to one hundred."

"This game's gone on for a long time," Matt said to Albus, having to yell a bit so that he could be heard over the sound of the crowd.

"Yeah, but that's because of how bad the Seekers are," Albus said. "At least we get to see heaps of scoring from the Chasers, and it might not come down to whoever catches the snitch for once."

As Albus said this, Gryffindor scored yet another goal, increasing their lead again to one hundred and thirty points. Soon, Hufflepuff wouldn't be able to keep it close enough anymore.

"And Weasley intercepts yet again! That was fast! She might score twice inside one minute! And she does! Gryffindor's lead is almost big enough that Sinclair could catch the snitch and they would still win! Scratch that, it will be big enough in a moment, because Weasley has intercepted again! And that's another goal for Weasley! Gryffindor lead by one hundred and fifty points!"

The cheering from the Gryffindors was so loud that Albus couldn't even hear himself think anymore. He couldn't believe that they'd managed to get such a big lead two games in a row. When Darcy Rhodes scored a minute later, Gryffindor had a lead so big that even if Sinclair caught the snitch, Gryffindor would still win and still be a chance to win the Quidditch Cup.

"It looks like the game is all over now. Gryffindor have gone completely defensive, looking to keep the scores like this until someone catches the snitch. They really don't want to concede a goal now. Simpson passes to Drake, who's charging in! He's taking control to try to bring Hufflepuff back into it. This is his last year and his last chance to win the Cup. He goes for goal, and Weasley blocks it! That's her first successful block all game! She passes to her sister, and Dominique Weasley has broken out towards the goals again! She's scored passed Parents yet again, and the Gryffindor lead only grows! Gryffindor lead two hundred and seventy to one hundred."

It really did look like the game was over now. There was no way that Hufflepuff could score enough to get back within one hundred and fifty points with Gryffindor in such a defensive mode.

"Here's Simpson again. Simpson passes to Mondy, who passes back to Simpson. The two of them are just throwing it back and forth, waiting for someone to come at them. And Weasley tries to intercept! She's missed it! And Drake is taking the ball in towards the goals! He's scored passed Weasley! And Hufflepuff keep things interesting! The margin is back to one hundred and sixty points."

Albus sat relaxed. He knew that there was no way Hufflepuff would score like that again. Dominique never made the same mistake twice.

"And Weasley has made the same mistake twice!"

Albus suddenly got nervous.

"Mondy has managed to get inside the Gryffindor defensive structure, and she has scored! They are back to one hundred and fifty points behind!"

Things were getting more tense again, and the Chasers started to make mistakes all over the place, desperate to be the next team to score.

"Weasley drops the Quaffle! There was no pressure, she just seemed to forget she was holding it! Luckily Rhodes has recovered it. But he's passed it straight to Mondy! Mondy passes to Drake, but Drake's been hit by a bludger! Magnificent shot by Tuff, might be a game-saver, because Drake was getting close to goals there. Simpson recovers it, but his shot is a shocker. Straight to Victoire Weasley, and boy is this turning into bad Quidditch to watch."

The crowd was getting restless as the game devolved into a contest to see who could hold the Quaffle for the longest without making some sort of mistake. Albus stopped paying attention because it was unbearable to watch. Eventually, Gryffindor were able to score, but Hufflepuff scored moments later to bring it back to one hundred and fifty points again. Finally, someone saw the snitch.

"And Sinclair has seen the snitch! He's going for it! Keys has seen it too, and she's coming in from the opposite direction! They're both closing in on the snitch, and should get there at about the same time. It's gonna be very close! Keys is starting to get faster, and she's almost close enough to grab it! Sinclair can't stop himself, and he's almost hit Keys again! She's dodged him, and she's caught the snitch! Gryffindor win four hundred and thirty points to one hundred and thirty points! A three hundred point win, which puts Gryffindor in the lead for the Quidditch cup!"

Albus breathed a sigh of relief, along with many people from Gryffindor. They were looking like winning and actually won this time, which was better than they'd done against Slytherin. As long as they beat Ravenclaw in the last game, they were guaranteed to win the Quidditch cup, but that wasn't going to be easy.


	11. Chapter 10: Happy Birthday

**A/N: This is a very short chapter. It's sort of meant to be an in-between chapter where Albus just thinks about things a bit. I also wanted a chance to put some things in here without interrupting the flow of a more important chapter, and this felt like the best way to do it.**

February began to come to a close, which meant two things: Albus' birthday and another Quidditch match: Ravenclaw v Slytherin. The stakes were very high since whoever lost this match would not be able to win the House cup, unless Ravenclaw lost, in which case they would have to beat Gryffindor and hope that Hufflepuff beat Slytherin, but that didn't seem likely.

Albus made sure to keep a very careful eye on the Marauder's Map to make sure he would catch Prissy whenever she went into the Room of Requirement to go through the tunnel again. Unfortunately for him, this didn't seem to happen at all. Prissy slept soundly in her bed by night and rarely left the common room by day. In fact, there didn't seem to be anything unusual happening in the school. He never saw Merlin's name again and hardly anybody went into the Room of Requirement for a prolonged period of time.

Watching Quidditch was normally something that Albus enjoyed, but he realized for the first time ever that Quidditch also had the potential to be boring, and this game was possibly the most boring thing that Albus had ever seen.

"And Forney blocks another easy shot from Saunders," he heard Eireann Simon say over the loudspeaker, sounding just as bored as Albus was. "The score stays twenty to ten, still no score in the last twenty minutes. And still no sign of the snitch. I think that Moses' plan is to make the Ravenclaw players fall asleep."

Normally at a Quidditch game, everybody would be cheering for one thing or another. That wasn't true of the game, though. Some of the dedicated Ravenclaw or Slytherin fans were still getting into it, but everybody else seemed to only be staying out of obligation. They were bored out of their minds at the lack of anything happening. Ravenclaw would get the ball and try to score, but Forney would block it. Then Slytherin would have the ball and try to score, but Josephson would block it. This went on for ages, with the ball only getting through every now and then.

"And Dennel gets another shot at goal. This time Hanley sends a magnificently aimed bludger towards Forney. It doesn't hit Forney, but it does hit the Quaffle and knock it into the goals. Ravenclaw score, and they lead thirty to ten."

A lot of half-hearted cheering briefly came from the Ravenclaws, and then the game returned to its boring pattern of failing to score repeatedly.

After the game had been going on for almost half an hour, Ravenclaw finally started to increase their lead. They lead seventy to twenty when the snitch was finally spotted.

"And it looks like we'll finally see some action from the Seekers! Moses has gone into a dive, she's the more likely one to catch the snitch and keep her team alive. Ollivander trails behind her, desperate to catch her and get that snitch! He's in her slipstream as she approaches it. She reaches out with her arm, but a perfect bludger from Hanley has got her arm! She's spiralling a bit, but she's regained control. Looks like she's got a broken arm, she's holding it and looks to be in pain. And Ollivander catches the snitch! Timmy Ollivander keeps his team alive going into the last game. And the last game of the season, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw playing, will determine who wins the Quidditch Cup this year! Slytherin are completely out!"

Slytherin didn't see to take losing to Ravenclaw very well. Now that they were no chance to win the Quidditch Cup, there was no point in worrying about the next match. Neither Slytherin nor Hufflepuff had won a game yet, so neither of them could possibly win the Quidditch Cup and their next match was completely pointless.

After the Quidditch match, Professor Smith announced that he was going to take personal time off of teaching. Flitwick told the school that the replacement teacher for the time being would be none other than Harry Potter himself. This got Albus excited, not only because of how little he'd seen his dad during the school year, but also because it meant that his dad would be at school during his birthday that Thursday.

On Tuesday morning, the first day of the week that they had Defence Against the Dark Arts, Albus got very excited to see his dad again. He woke up extra early to get to the Great Hall for breakfast, being the first person to sit at the Gryffindor table to eat. He then waited eagerly for his father to arrive at the staff table so that he could talk to him.

He waited and waited. Rose and Matt arrived and sat alongside him, both focused on eating their breakfast. After they'd eaten, they began talking about something. Albus wasn't really paying attention to their conversation, he was focused on watching to see when his dad arrived. The staff table had begun to fill up, but Professor Smith's chair was still empty. Albus checked around the Great Hall to make sure his dad wasn't sitting elsewhere, but there was no sign of him. Perhaps he wasn't going to be here for breakfast and would get there when the lesson started?

Albus was boiling over with anticipation during his first two lessons. He didn't pay attention to anything in Transfiguration, but somehow managed to turn his plate into a hat regardless. The only person more surprised than him was Professor Abel.

At lunch he again waited in anticipation of seeing his dad at the staff table, but again it seemed that his dad wasn't in the Great Hall at all. Albus started to get worried that perhaps he was mistaken and his dad wasn't teaching them after all. He decided to ask Rose.

"Rose," he said. "Wasn't my dad going to be teaching us Defence Against the Dark Arts while Professor Smith is away?"

"I fink so," Rose said with her mouth full of mashed potatoes.

"But he's not at the staff table," Albus said. "And he wasn't there this morning either."

"Why not ask one of the seventh-years?" Matt said. "I think they had him before lunch."

"Ok," Albus said. He got up and walked over towards Victoire, before asking her the same question that he had asked Rose.

"Oh, didn't you hear? He had Auror business that he had to do, so he couldn't come," Victoire said.

Albus was taken aback, "So who's teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts?"

"Flitwick is!" Victoire said. "He says he's never taught it before, but he did fight in the war against Voldemort, so he knows what he's talking about."

Albus was surprised by this. The headmaster teaching them? He wondered what it would be like, and after lunch, he found out.

Flitwick was possibly the nicest person Albus had ever been taught by. He never got frustrated at anybody or lost his temper, only dropping his smile to take ten points from Gryffindor after Vincent tried to use him as an arm rest.

Flitwick also had a very different teaching style to Professor Smith. For one thing, he had to address the class from atop a pile of books on his desk because of his short height. Then he was always really encouraging, making sure that everybody understood how things worked and spending a lot of time with the students as individuals helping them.

Thursday came around and Albus was quite literally showered with gifts for his birthday. When all of the owls came through the Great Hall at breakfast delivering mail, a large number dropped various objects down to Albus. He got presents from many relatives and friends, with the single notable exception of his dad. He was starting to feel like his dad was neglecting him. His dad had been too busy to see him for almost the entire Christmas break, and had only been at Hogwarts for a week. He started to think that maybe it was his fault, that he wasn't living up to his dad's expectations. After all, his dad was the famous "Boy-Who-Lived", and all he'd done is get people angry. A horrible thought crossed his mind. What if his dad had found out that he'd told people about Merlin?

His dad had been very clear at King's Cross about not telling anybody, but it was already too late and he'd told both Matt and Professor Smith. He knew he could trust both of them, but he didn't tell his dad because his dad didn't know either of them. But if his dad found out, then maybe he was really angry with him. Albus couldn't bear the thought of his dad not talking to him.

Rose also received a letter that day from her mum, telling her that she would be spending the Easter break with her dad in Romania and that Hugo was already there. Apparently he was going to be there until at least the end of the year, possibly longer, and since not much was happening at the moment it was the best opportunity they would have to see him for a while.

Albus was feeling down, but he continued to keep a watchful eye on the Marauder's Map every night. He watched and waited for Prissy to get out of her bed one night, but whenever she did, she wouldn't go further than the girls' bathroom. Occasionally she'd wander around during the day, but never to the seventh floor.

As they were starting to approach Easter, the referendum on the Statute of Secrecy was getting closer and closer. The Daily Prophet had something about it on the front page every day, making some new prediction about the result or voicing someone's unique and new opinion on the whole thing. It seemed like the wizarding world was thoroughly divided between people who wanted muggles to know because it was unfair to keep something secret from them, and people who thought that the best way to protect muggles from the dangers of magic was to keep it secret from them. There were really good points on both sides of the argument, and it looked like the vote would be very close.

Albus started to wonder what his parents would vote for. He knew that they liked muggles, his dad had been raised by them, and a lot of his family worked for the Ministry of Magic making sure that muggle artefacts weren't given magical properties or wizards didn't do magic in the presence of muggles. Maybe they thought it was important for muggles to be protected from magic, so they would vote to keep the Statute of Secrecy as it is.

On the other hand, a lot of people were starting to think that the people who wanted to keep the Statute of Secrecy were just doing it because they thought that muggles didn't deserve to know about magic and the whole protection thing was just a justification for their view. Albus knew that there were still people out there who thought that wizards were just better than muggles, and muggles should be wiped out, and these people would probably want to keep the Statute of Secrecy because it gives the wizards and advantage if they ever want to fight muggles.

The referendum aside, life at Hogwarts was starting to get very boring. February became March, and March was coming to an end. Professor Smith came back from his personal leave and seemed to be in a very good mood, which had a positive impact on their lessons.

"Now, we've covered virtually the entire curriculum for your first year, which means that we could effectively stop having lessons now and wait until next year," Professor Smith said one lesson. "However, it is obviously important that you all continue your education, so it is important that we now look at what is happening in the world around us at the moment. Can someone tell me something that the Ministry of Magic has done recently regarding the Dark Arts?"

Few people raised their hand, and the only non-Slytherin to do so was Rose, who was called on.

"They made possession of dark magic items illegal without a proper permit," Rose said matter-of-factly.

"Excellent! Five points to Gryffindor," Professor Smith said. "One such dark magic item is called a Hand of Glory. Does anybody know what a Hand of Glory does?"

Again, Rose's hand shot up, but this time so did Elise's. "Yes, Miss Parker?"

"When a candle is put in a Hand of Glory, it gives light only to the holder of the hand," she said, with an almost identical tone to that used by Rose moments earlier.

"Absolutely correct, Miss Parker! Another five points to Gryffindor," Professor Smith said very excitedly. "However, there is also more to the history of Hands of Glory than that. In modern times, that has been the express purpose of them, and they have been put to great use by common thieves who wish to enter a dark house without waking the people within. Originally, they were much more sinister.

"You see, the Hand of Glory was invented in the eighteenth century, a time when Dark Magic was the strongest it had been for some time. It was created by a very powerful spell which meant that it would also render motionless anyone in the vicinity of it aside from the person holding it once they'd put the candle in. It was also capable of unlocking any door it came across, even if it had been locked magically. This meant that there was almost no way of catching or stopping thieves who had a Hand of Glory.

"However, there was a downside in that the spell took several days to perform and it was easy to recognize a hand that was undergoing the process. You couldn't hide it either, because the spell had to be performed in sunlight. As a result, people stopped using the full spell and came up with nifty alternatives, none of which gave the Hand of Glory as much power as the full spell did. As a result, almost all modern Hands of Glory are merely capable of providing light just to the holder, while the other powers have faded into history.

"But that's enough of me talking. Here's a question for you all to discuss in small groups: what do you suppose would happen if somebody tried to make a Hand of Glory today using the original spell? Would people still recognize it? Would it work? And if it did work, what would they be able to achieve with a Hand of Glory?"

This ended up being a very interesting lesson, as after a few minutes of talking, Professor Smith went through some more Dark Magic items that had become illegal recently, and then finished off the lesson trying to 'broaden their minds'.

"Now, after discussing these 'Dark Magic items', can anyone tell me what it is that makes something a 'Dark Magic item' rather than just another magical object?" Professor Smith asked the class. Nobody answered, so he continued. "The answer isn't what you'd think. There's no official definition of dark magic accepted by the wider wizarding community, and a lot of people draw the line at different places, but some spells are seen as obviously dark, and others are obviously not. You'd never say that the Sorting Hat was dark, and some items like the Hand of Glory are quite obviously dark, but where do we draw the line? And do we draw a line at all? These are questions that every wizard must ask themselves one day. Class dismissed."

Albus went to bed that night happy that Professor Smith was back. Professor Smith always made Defence Against the Dark Arts the most enjoyable subject. Other subjects like Charms and Transfiguration tended to be simply about memorizing incantations and wand movements, but they actually got a chance to think about what they were doing in Defence Against the Dark Arts sometimes.

Albus was about to fall asleep when he remembered that he hadn't looked at the Marauder's Map for a while, and that could be bad. He didn't expect that Prissy would be wandering around, she had barely done it since he discovered the tunnel, probably for that reason, so it was unlikely she'd do it now.

Albus grabbed the Map from under his bed and put his wand on the parchment, whispering "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," and the Map revealed itself to him. He looked at the Slytherin common room straight away and saw that as usual, Prissy was just sleeping in her bed. He was about to close the map when he saw that someone was out of their bed in the Dungeons. He rolled his eyes and looked at the name. It was a name he didn't recognize, perhaps it was one of the older students.

The name was Lucius Malfoy.


	12. Chapter 11

**A/N: It's finally here! I've had this mostly finished for ages, but real life caught up to me, so here it is. I'll probably be a lot slower with updating for the rest of the story, but there's nothing I can do about that.**

After seeing someone called Lucius Malfoy was in the dungeons that one night, it happened again the next night as well. He looked every night, and Lucius Malfoy was always down there. He never saw this person anywhere else, either. He asked around the Gryffindor common room a bit, but nobody seemed to know. None of his cousins had heard of Lucius Malfoy, and that almost covered all of the years, so Albus was starting to get suspicious that Lucius Malfoy wasn't a student at Hogwarts at all.

"You should ask Scorpius Malfoy about it," Matt said to him one day.

"Why Scorpius?" Albus asked.

"Scorpius Malfoy," Matt said slowly. "They're both from the same family, aren't they? There aren't too many Malfoys around England are there? Just ask who he is, and if he's seen him lately."

"That's a brilliant idea!" Albus said, surprised. "I didn't expect you to come up with that!"

This seemed like an easy plan for Albus to go through with, too. Scorpius was a bit of a loner, so Albus figured there wouldn't be any difficulty getting him on his own. This assumption proved false, however, and Albus found that it was impossible to get Scorpius alone because he was so fast to get from one classroom to another all of the time. Albus would rush out of the room immediately after Scorpius to try to catch him, but it never proved successful.

Finally, after one Potions lesson, Albus was able to get him.

"Scorpius!" he called out after leaving the room. Scorpius didn't hear him. Or if he did, he was ignoring him.

"Scorpius!" Albus called out again, now running after him. "Scorpius!"

Scorpius kept walking, but once Albus caught up to him he spat out "What do you want, Potter?"

"I, um," Albus suddenly realized that he should've been a bit more prepared, and had no idea how he could bring it up. "I was just wondering if you had any brothers at Hogwarts," he stammered out, now walking alongside Scorpius.

"Why?" Scorpius asked, confused.

"Because, you know, I just thought, maybe,"

"What do you really want, Potter?" Scorpius interrupted him.

"Do you know Lucius Malfoy?" Albus blurted out.

"Yes," Scorpius said, now eyeing Albus suspiciously. "He's my grandfather."

"Ok," Albus said. "Have you seen him recently?"

"Not since Christmas break," Scorpius answered, and he quickened his pace. Albus decided not to bother keeping up with him since he already knew what he needed to. He knew who Lucius Malfoy was, and he definitely wasn't a student. The fact that Scorpius hadn't seen him while he was at Hogwarts was interesting, so he must've been hiding somehow. Albus wondered what kind of grandfather would be hiding in a school and not making contact with their grandson.

Albus realized that he had to talk to someone about it now. He knew that there was an old man hiding in the dungeons in Hogwarts, which was probably not meant to be happening. He decided to tell his dad about it when he went home over Easter break since his dad was the only person that believed him when he saw Merlin on the Marauder's Map last year. He decided to tell Matt what was happening, too.

One day, when they were meant to be brewing some potion that Albus couldn't even remember the name of, Albus started talking to Matt about it.

"So Scorpius says that it's his grandfather," Albus said. "So I'm going to ask my dad about it over Christmas break."

"Who's Scorpius's grandfather?" Rose asked.

"None of your business, nosy Rosie," Matt said back.

"That means it is my business," Rose retorted. "If it's a secret between you and Albus, then I have to know too."

"Why?" Matt asked.

"Because we're cousins!" Rose said a bit too loudly, and Professor Slughorn seemed to notice.

"I do hope that you three are talking about your potion," the teacher said from across the room.

"Yes, Professor!" Matt yelled back.

"It's alright, Matt," Albus said, before turning to Rose. "We think there's someone in the dungeons who isn't meant to be there."

Albus was pleased with himself. He'd told Rose exactly what they knew, but he hadn't revealed anything about the Marauder's Map or who was in the dungeons. It wasn't lying because she didn't ask about the map, and it's not like they knew anything about Lucius Malfoy other than his name and that he's related to Scorpius. He wasn't betraying anybody.

"Scorpius's grandpa is in the dungeons?" Rose asked, lowering her voice to a harsh whisper.

"I didn't say that," Albus said. "How did you-?"

"It's obvious," Rose replied condescendingly. "You were talking about it before, and you're a bad liar."

"That's true," Albus admitted. "But what should we do?"

"Tell a teacher!" Rose said.

"But no teacher would believe us," Albus said. "We haven't actually seen him, we just know that he's there."

"You can tell Professor Smith!" Rose said. "He'd probably believe you, he's a great teacher and everything."

"Yeah, I don't think I'm going to tell him," Albus said, then he thought for a moment for a good reason not to, before finally settling on "We can't trust him!"

Albus knew this was a lie. He knew very well that Professor Smith was probably the most trustworthy teacher at Hogwarts, and telling him would probably be the best thing to do, but he didn't want to admit Rose was right. Rose was always right, and Albus was tired of it.

Soon enough, Easter arrived, while meant that everybody went home for Easter break. Rose's dad met her at the airport with Hugo, and the three of them immediately went off to Romania, meaning that Harry wouldn't see them all break.

Albus waited around for his parents to arrive with Matt, but after a while Matt had to leave with his mum. After Matt left, Albus decided to wait with James, who was talking to Fred. Albus approached James, and James looked at him, smiling.

"Albus, dad's busy doing stuff for the Ministry, and mum's at work right now, so we're going home with Uncle George," James said.

"When did you find that out?" Albus asked.

"When my dad owled me about it this morning," Fred said. "Said he only found out about it last night and sent the owl as soon as he could."

While Albus didn't mind the idea of going with his Uncle Fred, he was definitely disappointed. After not being able to spend much time with him over Christmas break, it was looking like he wasn't going to spend much time with him over Easter break, either. He then realized that he wouldn't be able to talk to his dad about Lucius Malfoy. He figured he should probably owl him anyway, since that's what his dad said to do if he saw Merlin's name on the Marauder's Map.

He shoved his palm into his face, realizing that he could've simply owled his dad while he was still at Hogwarts and his dad might've taken time off of work to talk to him about it! That was a missed opportunity.

After a while, Uncle George turned up and dropped James and Albus at their house. Easter break ended up being far less eventful than Christmas break had been. Since Uncle Ron and Albus' dad were both abroad, as well as Rose and Hugo, there wasn't much point in everybody gathering together.

Without his dad at home, Albus resorted to owling his dad to see if he could talk to him about Lucius Malfoy. Unfortunately, no matter how many owls Albus sent, his dad wouldn't reply. Albus found this extremely frustrating because he couldn't figure out another way to get information about Malfoy. He didn't want to tell anybody else that he'd seen Malfoy in the dungeons in Hogwarts, because he hadn't. There was no way to tell anybody about it without also telling them about the Marauder's Map, which is something that his dad had made him promise not to do.

The Easter break was also a bit hard for Albus, because it was by far the longest amount of time he'd ever gone without seeing Rose once, and he didn't really want to send any letters all the way to Romania because he was scared that a journey like that might kill their owl.

When Albus did talk to people by owl, mostly all they talked about was the referendum. The Statute of Secrecy had stood for centuries, and now it was looking like it could be changed for the first time, so everybody was talking about it and sharing their opinion. Albus didn't really have an opinion. On the one hand, people were saying that it would be good for muggles to know what was going on around them, and it would allow magic people to have more freedom in what they wanted to do. But on the other hand, it would be a lot of change, and some people weren't sure that muggles would be able to handle it. Whatever the outcome, Albus would be fine with it. What really mattered to him was Lucius Malfoy.

Albus decided at the dinner table one night that he really needed to know about Malfoy, so he decided to ask his mum about it.

"Mum," he said after he swallowed his mouthful of beef. "Do you know anything about someone called Lucius Malfoy?"

His mother almost choked on her food.

"Where did you hear that name, Al?" she asked him, a slight look of shock on her face.

"Um," Albus thought for a second, and realized that he didn't actually have a good reason for knowing Lucius Malfoy even existed. "I heard one of the students at school talk about him."

His mother seemed to take this as a good enough reason. "Well he's a stupid old man, and that's all you need to know about him."

"Why is he stupid?" Albus asked, wanting to get more information than just that.

"Lots of reasons, Al, lots of reasons," his mother said quietly, turning her attention back to her food.

"What reasons?" Albus asked.

"They don't matter, Al," his mother said, trying to change the conversation to something else.

"Why don't they matter?" Lily piped in.

"Because it's stuff that happened before any of you were even born," she said.

"If it doesn't matter at all, then why don't you just tell us?" James interjected. Albus noticed that his two siblings were now just as interested as he was. Apparently hinting that it was something they shouldn't know meant that they were more interested to know.

"Fine," his mother said. "Lucius Malfoy was a follower of You-Know-Who."

"So he's a Death Eater?" James asked, looking proud to know what the phrase Death Eater meant.

"Yes, he was a Death Eater," his mother said. "He was one of the first, back when You-Know-Who first started to get powerful. He was a blood-purist who wanted to kill anybody that was 'impure', and he did just that. For years, people were being killed simply because their parents were muggles."

"So doesn't that mean he should be in Azkaban?" Albus asked. "If he killed people that is."

"Yes, he should definitely be in Azkaban," his mother said, looking slightly annoyed. "But in the first war, nobody could pin anything down on him. There was no proof that he'd done everything willingly, so he got to walk free. When he fought in the second war, it was obvious that he was doing everything of his own free will, and he was going to Azkaban. That's when your father stepped in."

"What did he do?" Albus asked, now excited that it was something his dad really was involved in. When he got to talk to his dad about it, his dad would be super happy to have information about an old enemy of his.

"Your idiot father decided to save him from Azkaban," she said. "He went to the Wizengamot and made a big deal about how Malfoy had a change of heart and should be let off. And it wasn't just Lucius Malfoy, it was his entire family. A family of Death Eaters let off because your father wanted to be a nice guy."

"Really?" Albus asked. "Why did he let them off?"

"Beats me," his mother said. "But it was a bad move. Your father's a great wizard, and an even greater man. He makes few mistakes in his life, but this was definitely one of them."

Albus refused to believe that. He knew his father, and there was no way he'd let someone off for no reason. "But there must've been a reason for it," he insisted.

"Albus, there was no reason. It came out of nowhere. Even Malfoy was shocked when it happened."

"But dad wouldn't just let someone off like that for no reason!" he yelled.

"Watch your tone, Albus," his mother said sternly. "And perhaps there was a reason, but whatever it is, there is no way to justify what Malfoy did. He belongs in Azkaban."

The rest of Easter break was uneventful, but the revelation that Lucius Malfoy was a former Death Eater and a mass murderer really made it more imperative that Albus tell his dad as soon as possible. For the entire Easter break he owled his dad day and night, and each time the family owl would return home empty-handed. Albus wasn't sure how the owl was getting to his father and back so quickly, what with his dad being overseas working for the Ministry, but he knew there was nothing wrong with her delivering letters because she'd brought back a few letters from Matt from time to time. He hadn't told Matt anything about Lucius Malfoy because he was scared that someone would read their letters, so he decided to tell him in person when they saw each other at the end of break.

Albus' mother took him and James to King's Cross station to catch the Hogwarts express at the end of break, having to take Lily with them because she couldn't be trusted by herself. James helped Albus load his things onto the train, and just before boarding the train, Albus was dragged aside by his mother. She leaned down to his level and talked to him.

"Albus, I know you've been sending your father a lot of owls over the break, and I know that he hasn't been replying to any of them," she said. "But you mustn't worry about that. He's not neglecting you, he's just far too busy. He definitely got your letters, but he won't exactly be able to reply to any of them for a while. I'm sorry if you feel like he's rejecting you."

Albus knew that this was true. His dad couldn't set a foot wrong, so obviously there was a good reason for not responding. "I understand," Albus said.

"Good," his mother smiled. "Now get on the train quickly, before it leaves without you."

Albus did have to rush to get on the train just before it left, and then realized that he hadn't seen Matt, so he didn't know where he was. He wandered the train for a while, peeking into each of the compartments to see who was in there. Eventually, he found one which was occupied by Rose, Matt, and, interestingly, Norman Pierson, a Slytherin first-year. Albus entered and was immediately thrown backwards by Rose, who had lunged at him to hug him.

"It's nice to see you, too, Rose," he said, laughing a bit. "How was Romania?"

Rose got off of him and immediately went into a very lengthy talk about everything she did while she was in Romania. She didn't really stop talking for long enough for anybody else to say anything for the entire trip to Hogwarts. Albus normally wouldn't mind this, he'd spent years listening to Rose talk for hour after hour, but he really wanted to get Matt on his own so he could talk to him about Lucius Malfoy. He didn't get a chance to do this until they'd arrived at Hogwarts and gone to their dormitory to sleep for the night. He completely forgot, too, until he found himself lying around sleeplessly and decided to get the Marauder's Map out. That's when it hit him, and he felt very stupid indeed for forgetting about.

Albus got out of his bed and looked around. It looked like everyone was asleep except for Vincent, but Vincent seemed occupied looking out the window by his bed, so Albus figured that he didn't have to worry about him overhearing anything. He crept over to Matt's bed and shook him to wake him.

"Bloody hell! What time is it?" Matt yelled as he woke.

"Sh!" Albus whispered. "It's one o'clock, you don't want to wake anybody else up!"

"One o'clock?" Matt asked. "As in one in the morning or one in the afternoon?"

"One in the afternoon, obviously," Albus said sarcastically. "It's really rude to wake people in the middle of their afternoon nap."

Matt seemingly didn't get the sarcasm, and a look of panic overcame him. "So I missed classes already?"

"No, you idiot, it's the middle of the night! Look around you!" Albus whispered almost as loud as was possible without outright speaking to him.

Matt looked around him for a second, and then realized how dark it was. "Why did you wake me up? I was having a really good dream."

"Because I have to tell you what I found out about Lucius Malfoy," Albus explained, whispering, and he then proceeded to tell Matt what he had found out from his mum over the Easter break. Matt was shocked.

"A Death Eater?" he yelled out loud.

"Quiet!" Albus whispered.

"Sorry," Matt apologized. "But a Death Eater? Really?"

"That's what my mum said," Albus said.

"No wonder he's in the dungeons near the Slytherin common room," Matt whispered to himself. "You have to tell someone! He might kill someone!"

"I know, I know, but how can I tell someone without also telling them about the Marauder's Map?" Albus asked.

"You could tell Professor Smith," Matt whispered. "He already knows about the Marauder's Map because you already told him, and he believed you when you said Merlin was there."

"That's a great idea!" Albus whispered.

"I know it is, it's also Rose's idea," Matt whispered.

Albus suddenly remembered what Rose had suggested before Easter break, and decided against it purely on principle.

"We should probably tell someone else," Albus said. "I mean if we tell Professor Smith everything then he might know too much."

Albus knew that his argument was stupid, but he couldn't think of any better reason, so he just went with it.

"Why would it be a bad thing?" Matt asked, pretty confused now.

Albus didn't have anywhere else he could go with this. He'd really need to get better at arguing. "Fine, I guess we'll tell Professor Smith. But how are we going to catch him on his own?"

"What do you mean?" Matt asked him.

"Well we can't tell him when other people are around, otherwise they'd find out about Malfoy, too," Albus explained.

Matt was about to reply, but he got interrupted by a voice from the other side of the room.

"You could go to his office,"

Albus and Matt quickly turned around to see who had been listening to their conversation. Albus saw that it was Vincent, still sitting up on his bed looking out the window.

"You can find out when he's alone using your map," Vincent continued. "Then it should be easy to get into his office."

Albus was shocked that he hadn't thought about that sooner. It was blindingly obvious that he could use to Marauder's Map to find out when Professor Smith was alone, especially since that was the way that he'd found out about Malfoy in the first place. Then he got even more shocked when he realized how much Vincent must know.

"How much do you know?" Albus asked Vincent.

"Only what you've said out loud when looking at the map," Vincent said. "And this conversation now. You know you talk in your sleep, right?"

Albus spent the next few weeks trying to figure out a way to get Professor Smith on his own. Sometimes he'd out and about doing something with students. Sometimes he'd be in his office talking to some other teacher. Once in a while, Albus would see that he was on his own, but by the time he got there Professor Smith would already be occupied talking to someone else, and he had to come up with some sort of excuse for why he wanted to see Professor Smith, after which the professor would be too busy to see him at all. He thought about getting another detention with him just to get to talk to him, but he figured that that might be a bit extreme.

It ended up being a Saturday evening when he and Matt saw that Professor Smith was alone in his office pacing, so they decided to go down and talk to him. They kept an eye on the map to make sure that nobody else went to see him, but that was all clear. Unfortunately, because they'd been so preoccupied on watching Professor Smith's office, they didn't pay enough attention to their own surroundings, and they found themselves ambushed by Merrill Bonham's gang. Hex after hex flew at them, but luckily for the two of them, simply firing many hexes doesn't guarantee that any will hit their target, and they managed to duck around a corner to avoid them. After ducking into one of the secret passages and hiding from the bullies for a few minutes, the hexes stopped. Albus risked a peek and saw that they were gone. He then mentally slapped himself for not checking the Map to see if they'd gone. That would've been the much safer option.

Albus and Matt were close enough to Professor Smith's office that they figured he'd still be there by himself when they got there. They go to the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom and Albus knocked on the door. They waited for a moment, but there was no reply.

"His office is miles away from the door, Al," Matt said. "He probably couldn't hear it."

"Then how do we get to him?" Albus asked.

"I don't know," Matt said, before turning the door knob and opening the door. Matt laughed to himself and Albus punched him on the shoulder before the two of them walked across the classroom to the staircase that they knew lead to Professor Smith's office. Albus knocked on this door and waited a moment again. There was no reply, and Albus was about to open the door himself when he heard a huge crash come from the other side, after which the door flung open, almost hitting Albus in the face as it did so.

"Albus, Matt! Come in!" he exclaimed happily when he saw them. "You'll have to excuse the mess, I've been rather busy of late."

Albus walked in and saw that it was indeed a mess. It was probably the messiest room that Albus had ever seen. There was hardly a spot of floor that wasn't covered in what appeared to be test papers, though the desk was instead covered in vials of strange potions. Blocking one of the windows was a large bookshelf full of torn and tattered books, some of which even looked sad at the state they were in. The other window was cracked so badly that Albus couldn't even see through it.

"Come, sit down," Professor Smith said as he walked over various pieces of parchment, not even caring that he was stepping on them and probably ruining them. He then sat at the chair by his desk, and Albus was confused because there didn't appear to be any other chairs.

"Sit down where, Professor?" he asked.

"Oh, sorry," Professor Smith said. He leaned over his desk and knocked over a massive pile of parchment and books, revealing two chairs underneath it. "Take a seat."

Matt and Albus tentatively walked over to the chairs and sat down on them.

"So, what can I do for you boys?" Professor Smith asked, smiling broadly at them.

Albus and Matt looked at each other, and then Albus turned to Professor Smith and said, "Do you remember when I told you about the Marauder's Map?"

"Yes, of course," Professor Smith said dismissively, before raising his voice and saying "That's the map that tells you where everyone is in the castle, right?"

"Yes," Albus said. "Well, I've been looking at it a bit, and I've noticed that there's someone in the dungeons who isn't meant to be there."

Professor Smith started to look pale. "Who?" he asked.

"It says it's someone called Lucius Malfoy," Albus explained. "My mum told me he used to be a Death Eater-"

"I know who he is!" Professor Smith exclaimed very loudly, which scared Albus out of his skin. "Are you sure he's in the castle?"

"Yes, in the dungeons," Albus said again.

"Do you know why he's here?" Professor Smith asked.

"No," Albus answered.

"Have you talked to him?"

"No."

"Have you gone down and seen him?"

"No," Albus answered a third time, realizing that he didn't have much evidence to back up his claim.

"Well isn't that curious," said an angry voice from behind them. Albus turned around and saw that Professor Abel and Professor Longbottom had both entered the office during their conversation. Professor Longbottom seemed to have a look of disappointment on his face while Professor Abel was nothing short of furious. "A student has an artifact that allows them to see the location of everybody in the castle and they don't hand it over to a teacher," Professor Abel continued. "That is at best irresponsible, and at worst an attempt to undermine the authority of the staff of Hogwarts. I think that it would serve you two well to spend the rest of the year in detention with me."

Albus was shell-shocked, and didn't really know how to reply. Luckily, Matt was there to help.

"But Professor, there's someone down in the dungeons you have to worry about!" he said.

"That is an unsubstantiated claim made by two first-year students. I find it highly unlikely that someone would be able to get into Hogwarts without help from staff, and the staff of Hogwarts are the most trustworthy people in all of Great Britain. There is therefore no way for someone to get into Hogwarts."

"But Professor, you have to believe us, the map says-"

Matt was cut off by Albus elbowing him in the rib cage. Albus mouthed across 'Shut up!' to stop him from talking. He wasn't going to let any more information slip. His dad would get so angry at him.

"If you have such a map, would you like to give it to me so that I can verify your claim?" Professor Abel asked.

Albus shook his head. The last thing he wanted was for the Marauder's Map to fall into the wrong hands, and Professor Abel was clearly the wrong hands. "I lost it," he lied. "I think it was somewhere near the owlery, but when I went back to look I couldn't find it."

"Well that is a shame," Professor Abel said condescendingly. "I suppose that means we have no way of knowing whether or not someone truly is in the dungeons."

Albus knew what she was doing here. She was trying to trick him into giving her the Map so that he'd get in trouble. He was smarter than that, though, and he decided to stick with his story so that she wouldn't get it from him.

"Sorry," he muttered under his breath.

"Well in that case there's nothing to worry about," Professor Abel said. "You were probably imaging it."

The five of them stayed where they were in awkward silence for what seemed like hours, until the silence was broken by Professor Abel.

"Now today is a Saturday, and I'm quite sure that the two of you have not completed your Transfiguration essays. Today would be the ideal day to write them, so I advise that you return to your common rooms immediately to work on them."

Albus sat there for a moment, expecting Professors Abel and Longbottom to leave so that he and Matt could continue talking to Professor Smith, but it soon became clear that they weren't going to, so he and Matt left the office to go back to the Gryffindor common room.

1.


End file.
